Why advertisers should stop objectifying women

A woman alighting from a taxi encounters a man who, ogling her bosom, says: “Nice dashboard”. “Thank you,” she replies.

Apparently expecting more from the man, the woman is left bewildered when he shifts his attention to the cab’s dashboard, inquiring how the sheen has been so well maintained in such an old car. She shakes her head, twists the lips and walks away.

This animated clip is currently running on local television screens to advertise Tropikal dashboard spray. Obviously, the creators think that it is innovative to juxtapose a woman’s breasts with a car’s dashboard. Unfortunately, not in this day and age. Simply put, this advert objectifies women.

Objectification is the treatment of a person as a commodity for admiration, acquisition and/or exploitation. It is a form of emotional gender-based violence, which can have physical and sexual ramifications as well. A man who sees a woman as a sexual object can easily coerce her physically into a sexual encounter.

Comparing a woman’s bust with a dashboard insinuates that the two perform comparable functions and occupy similar positions in the anatomies of the paralleled objects.

Also read: Objectifying and disrespecting women will lead us unto doom

The spray that protects the dashboard is subtly paralleled with what breasts produce – nourishing milk. That the bust is all the man sees in the lady portrays obsession with the female anatomy, implying that women lack other substantial dimensions beyond sensual and visual appeal.

This tendency to objectify women is evident from past advertisements. In the early 1990s, an advertisement of a French car brand showed a woman with a fluffy dress and a poodle, the intention being to vivify the speed of the automobile that had just passed.

However, there was no visible car. Was this then an advertisement for a car or a woman? Was the choice of a woman as the illustrative object perhaps exploiting the notion that she is a visual spectacle that automatically attracts attention?

On June 10, 1994, a different brand of the same car was advertised. The car was placed at the bottom while the rest of the page contained the picture of a woman in a swimsuit, wearing dark glasses, hanging on to a man, sipping from a glass and with a poodle gracing her right leg.

Notice the motif of the poodle in both advertisements, and link that with what dogs stand for in ordinary parlance. Also consider why the woman had to hang on to a man’s arms yet this was not a wedding!

Outrage

The advertisement was condemned by several women leaders who described it as "offensive, outrageous, immoral and an insult" (Daily Nation, June 11, 1994). The advertiser retorted that "there was completely no sexual message in (the advert)" and that it should have been read “symbolically”.

Of course it was read symbolically, the woman representing an item for acquisition. Read further, the implication is that she could also be acquired with lucre, just like the car.

In another advertisement (June 26, 1997), an Italian brand of a car was advertised using the image of a woman in designer attire, each piece labelled with a price corresponding to that of the vehicle’s parts and the caption: “How to make a fashion statement without affecting your bank statement”. This was to show that the car was both fashionable and affordable. Fine. But where did the woman come in rather than as a visual bait?

Regrettably, objectification is even tolerated in places expected to be more discerning. In the 11th National Assembly, women legislators denounced a cartoon featured in the media on May 22, 2013, portraying as masseurs their colleagues who had accompanied the Deputy President on a foreign trip.

The cartoon implied that these legislators were merely on the trip for cosmetic and sensual purposes. The protest was dismissed by a senior legislator who said he had not been reading cartoons lately and was, therefore, not competent to comment on the one at hand.

This habit of subjecting women legislators to sexist and demeaning treatment inheres in frequent reference to their physiques, faces and dressing, in addition to use of personal epithets rather than established honorifics. If this happens in national legislatures, then where can we expect protection from?

An advertisement is meant to publicise a product, not to assault women’s sensibilities. In the present case, what value does the image of a woman add to the dashboard cleaner? That the woman in the clip does not challenge the slur suggests that the content creator thinks such behaviour should be accepted.

Women are 51 per cent of the national population. What would happen if they, and sensitive men, ‘girlcotted’ the offensively promoted products? Should the media also not screen adverts and reject insensitive ones?

The writer is an international gender and development consultant and scholar ([email protected]).