By Kamal Raj Sigdel
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The idiot box was making a fool of me with some ads. It was news hour. We were all gaping at the screen. Suddenly in the ads, a couple appeared eating at their dining table. The husband looked at us and prescribed the Hulas brand rice with the logic that the rice is color sorted and is as delicious as his wife who was silently accompanying him there. What nonsense? What a terrible conceit between delicious "rice" and his "wife"? No sooner was it over I was stuck by another ad where the Sashu and her son appeared appreciating her Buhari for cleaning her husband's cloths so well that they shine even in darkness. They thanked her but unfortunately, she attributed all the credit to the commercial detergent. "Oh God, at least she should have thought little of herself", I felt. There was another show. This time it was an engagement party. The gentleman caller resolves to marry the girl simply because she was a perfect cook to meet his taste. But she is content with her craftsmanship that she has used ABD Masala -- the secret of her success. Another was about dish washing. Let us not cite them all. I wonder, what message do these ads give besides their commercialism? What type of image of woman do these ads unhesitatingly represent? I feel, these ads seem treating women as pets as something that is supposed to be consumed, as a "delicious" recipe and so on. Women are not always supposed to engage themselves "rattling breakfast plates and dishes in basement kitchens". Are these ads' representations, therefore, not stereotypical?
Serious consideration, I think, should be given to this issue. Now, the need is that the Nepalese women should begin a "re-visionary process" for the feministic deconstruction that man no longer holds the center.
If we analyze the image of women, as in the above-mentioned ads, in almost all the soap ads and operas we see an essentializing and stereotypical definition of women that their virtual job is to, by hook or by crook, make their husbands happy. If she fails to do that, she is supposed to feel herself heartily guilty.
By thus disseminating such stereotypical male-dominated ads such a 'hegemonical' relation is created that for the people the situation will be equally surprising when a hen crows in early dawn or when in ads the present hierarchy is reversed. And most perhaps people will die of surprise if a male character is shown in any ad altruistically exhilarated in cooking foods in kitchen and washing women's garments in bathroom, prescribing certain products as a clue to draw wives' love.
The paradox lies here in the fact that on the one hand, the government is investing its efforts and energies but on the other hand, we see such humiliating stuffs being broadcast from government and all the public media. At least the so-called intellectuals or the bureaucrats should have made public/mass media gender sensitive. The crux lies, I think, in their preconceptualized head. They see nothing wrong in these ads. How could they be gender sensitive? They take it as casual and common. But the shame is that the same bureaucrats exorcize others to be gender sensitive in their speech. What all these NGOs and INGOs doing by being deaf and blind to such a serious issue. Why do we enjoy looking at these conservatisms? They all are the blunders made from the perspective of male chauvinism. I, being a male, would prefer to reveal this blatant mistake or recklessness. Let some female activists, either Showalter or Saxton, emerge again to lobby on banning such ads. Otherwise these ads will keep on continuously creating stereotypical images and the male dominated language and the media may create "images of power and power of images" as Mahasweta Sengupta would have put it.
[Originally published in The Kathmandu Post 18 Dec. 2003: C1, 4. 20 Dec. 2003]
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