Ad superwoman — is she for real?
By Deepika Vij

LOOKING ‘‘fair and lovely’’ all day long, washing clothes as ‘‘white as snow’’ and becoming the ‘‘ice ice baby’’ to serve the crucial cube of ice to the husband’s boss right on time — is this what the Indian woman is all about?

Does the archetypal Indian woman’s world revolve around her home and family with her main preoccupation being to deliver the needs of her family with a smile on her face — as the adman portrays?

Or are advertisers finding it difficult to break out of the mould of stereotypes and visions of supermoms and superwives they have so carefully built over the years?

‘‘Most of the advertisements project women with that something extra — a person with a higher level of self-confidence and satisfaction — someone who manages just about everything without batting an eyelid.

‘‘But this superwoman reinforces the role of a home-maker. Thus we have a picture of a super home-maker,’’ says Akhila Sivadas, executive director, Centre for Media Advocacy and Research.

‘‘If women hold half of the real world, in the ad world, they hold it entirely. Most of the ads show stereotypes of supermom who do almost everything both outside and inside their homes happily,’’ says Kiran Aggarwal, Secretary in the Department of Women and Child Development.

‘‘But the problem is that they project an image of women which many try to ape unsuccessfully, and that has a negative effect on the women’s psyche,’’ says Aggarwal.

Activists say the superwoman also creates an ‘‘aspiration crisis.’’

‘‘The way these screen-women look, dress-up and function... living in plush houses with everything at their disposal, like super-rich women — they cause a problem as many women viewers aspire to get that kind of a life,’’ says Sivadas.

But advertisers say this is precisely how women like to view themselves and they are portraying the reality.

‘‘In our product researches carried out on groups of women we have found that women like to be projected as supermoms. They want to become the perfect hostess, the perfect home-maker and that’s what our advertising tries to reflect,’’ says Ashok Bansal of Whirlpool.

‘‘Women don’t like us to show that washing clothes is demeaning but rather they would like it to be projected as an enjoyable experience.

‘‘Thus they don’t want to be seen as a provider but an executioner and hence, we have smart, intelligent women carrying on household chores without feeling the pinch,’’ says Marsie Fernandes, vice-president (marketing) of the same company.

But most women say that these ads are actually catering for a niche consumer, a category called the ‘super home-maker’ which represents a very minuscule population.

‘‘Most of the product research is based on qualitative studies keeping in mind a product. In qualitative studies, women say they want to be seen as ‘powerful’ and ‘in control’ but with an Indian image.

‘‘But these get reinterpreted and translated according to the product manifestation," says Sivadas.

Their real aspirations to be powerful within the house and make decisions on their own, gets translated into a "product power," a power and satisfaction derived from using the product whereby the real aspirations get lost somewhere, she says.

But activists say there is nothing wrong in showing women as super, provided they break out of the ‘stereotypes’ which affects society.

‘‘If we think that advertising changes perception, we are looking at the wrong place for a real problem. Advertisements don’t dictate the agenda for change, it does not have any role to perform.... It only reflects what society shows.

‘‘Thus if stereotypes in ads have to change, attitudes within society also need to be changed,’’ says ad-maker Shivjeet Khullar, national creative director, Joint Communication.

But Aggarwal says it’s high time that advertisers undertake the challenge to show women as they are. And though society has to change its attitude and look at women not as commodities or only home-makers, but individuals requiring an amount of space and commitment outside their families.

The advertisers maintain that they can try to make some sort of difference.

Instead of ads stating that ‘‘let’s get your wife an oven or a dishwasher’’ so that she spends less time in the kitchen, there could be ads where a husband would help out in the chores and even a role reversal could be portrayed to break out of a mould, says Khullar.

Many such advertisements have already arrived.

Many detergent, soap and washing machine advertisements are showing the husbands doing the chores or sharing household work. But more would be needed to create the necessary dent.

‘‘Advertisements that show women responsible for dirty clothes, bad marks of kids are totally unrealistic,’’ says Madhu Prasad, lecturer in philosophy at Delhi University.

‘‘And so are advertisements where women are shown to do everything right from sweeping floor, cleaning bathrooms, going for work and hosting a perfect party without batting an eyelid.

‘‘All we need is realistic ads where we are shown as we are in our day-to-day lives, so that we are really inspired to buy the product rather than be driven by false aspirations,’’ she says.