The recent defacing of female faces on billboards has left advertisers in a quandary. Should they replace female faces with those of men? If so, wouldn’t a man look silly trying to sell, say, diapers?
Born and bred in Lahore, I have always considered myself a Lahorite first. This nostalgia for Lahore nags at me in an odd way. However, on my last visit I saw a phenomenon taking Lahore over: black blotches smeared over each and every female face smiling down from billboards along the city roads. If this were a random happening affecting only one or two ad-signs, the matter could have been ignored as a prankster’s gag. But this wasn’t the case. What could lead anybody to such a black act and that too with blatant disregard of the what the cost this senseless smearing will be to the company who has advertized as well as the creative loss to the mind behind the advert? And on a larger scale, the psychological damage to the whole city that is ashamed to see such perversion openly display? The problem was indeed deeper than just blackened female faces on billboards.
What becomes immediately apparent is that the smearing is selective. Everything and everybody besides the woman in the ad is left intact. Who could be so averse to the idea of seeing a woman’s face in a benign advertisement? In this age of the electronic print media and light speed communication, when even the gherat mand pathans have reconciled with eating roti kabab out of newspaper wraps bearing female fotoos, such depravity on public advertising boards, common everyday items, is surely absurd.
It doesn’t take much to understand that any commodity needs some advertisement to get introduced to the market. Even our zealots, before running for public offices campaigned and canvassed (if it were to go through the motions only) before ending up behind one of the red tipped microphones, with bucket loads of tar to ladle out to the populace. One can hear Plato almost hollering in his Utopia, “The state is what it is because its citizens are what they are”. And in this case, there’s a whole herd of black sheep carelessly prancing upon the face of the nation in many ways than one. Black footprints on blackened faces looking down city billboards is just one out of many.
Coming back to the mundane world of ad-men and their ad-signs, it is quite certain that ad agencies have the sense to realize that a consumer item as basic as a toothpaste or as high-tech as a mobile-phone requires the lady of the house to be in the picture, both literally and figuratively. And these items are just the beginning of the list that includes loads of edible items like biscuits, tea bags, juices etc., practically the whole pantry of the house. And who has the keys to the pantry is anybody’s guess. Or in the case of the fundos, if their physical appetite is as pad-locked as the sexual one. A penthouse and not a pantry can take the load. So, all is fair game.
The soft female face, on even a billboard, becomes an easy object of wrath. Why? Because frailty thy name is woman (literally speaking).
So, what do the ad-agents do, if not shoot women in their studios. They, the ad-men, might be forced at the point of a gun to hire a guy for shampoo advertisement to show his dandruff dusted hair with a pinch of salt, instead of a woman displaying a healthy fall of cascading hair length. But then who could be a plausible replacement for ads displaying skin fairness creams?
Of course females are rubbing into their faces desperately hoping to change the pigment perhaps; now what will it take a man to perform this feat in still or motion picture is anybody’s guess.
Still going a little further, people selling diapers would have to do some ‘hound’-hunting for male volunteers to pose before the camera with the beatific face and the bottom of a naked baby dangling in the arms of a miserably puzzled dad, as to what on earth could cause anyone to be so excited about a diaper? Now, whether such a masterpiece will appeal to the ubiquitous ‘mom’ in the women-folk or not, it will definitely spur women rights organizations to lead a not so ‘pampering’ crusade against men-folk.
A couple years back, there was a controversy over the advertisement of sanitary napkins. The issue took off when some practical minded entrepreneur decided to launch a new brand of napkins in the market. As everybody knows, business is not done through implicit messages or revelations. A sanitary napkin is a sanitary napkin and cannot be called tissue paper or toilet roll or a nappy at the ridiculous best. But for some odd reason, the very mention of the word in public view or hearing was not acceptable to the twisted logic of the fundos who saw haya and sharam, the attributes thought to be the proud possession of the female species only, at stake. However, sanity prevailed, and the advertisement was finally allowed after much hullabaloo.
And who doesn’t remember the extent of damage caused to the glaring issue of family planning when public advertisement of contraceptive methods was shot down by the custodian of Islam, the great General himself? What makes it possible now with the same people, the same primitive mindset, and not much to boast about the political set-up as farcical as ever? Whatever the reason for this turnaround, but sure that an open approach towards the issue has eliminated greatly the element of social embarrassment associated with it.
As a result, now when an ad runs on TV, with spouses basking in their decision of spacing out births, with the mother-in-law butting in to take credit for the decision, just for good measure, (even the ad-guys have the sense not to ignore her), and a host of other ads emphasizing that children are not to be born to increase the family line only but with some more serious considerations. With this regard, no lounge or bedroom in any home has suffered any embarrassing convulsions with women-folk running for dupattas to hide their faces and men scowling and waving their fists at the glass screens for bringing such vulgarity to their homes. The issue has rather become acceptable and palatable.
For any society to progress, as is true of any household, it is integral that women be given freedom of expression. A more constructive outlook is required. Females, in our hypocritical and dual faced society are already at a disadvantage. They too have certain rights which are inviolate and inalienable. This may sound idealistic in a parochial culture like ours. But looking the other way or coating them black will not take them away.
A woman smiling with a biscuit tray in her hand, with spouse and kids playing on the side, is hardly an outrageous sight. Rather, it appeals pleasantly to any healthy mind in any healthy society. No religion, belief or code gets threatened by such a benign act. Shooting for a biscuit or tea advert as opposed to posing half-nude for a film billboard, there’s got to be some choice difference there. Not to stand judgment on one or the other, but even playing the devil’s advocate, there’s got to be some basis of differentiating between what is benign and what is not. Tarring everything with the same brush doesn’t make a point.
The only point being made by this smearing spree is perhaps that women be put outright out-of-sight. But can they be put out of thoughts is the question. The minds blackening these adverts do face some challenge there...or at least their anatomy does.
The recent defacing of female faces on billboards has left advertisers in a quandary. Should they replace female faces with those of men? If so, wouldn’t a man look silly trying to sell, say, diapers? 
