Is this what women want?

Shailaja Bajpai

Women. Must be sick of seeing other women. Men should be heartily sick of the sight of them too. You can switch TV channels until your thumb develops meta-carpal syndrome, but you can’t avoid the company of women. It’s got so, that when seven wise men suited and seated in a circle, appeared on Star News’ assembly election coverage, you were almost — mind you, only almost — overjoyed. Didn’t matter what they looked like: tall, short, bearded, balding, bespectacled — at least they wore after shave. Once this exclusive, male bastion is stormed, there’s really only Amitabh Bachchan and the Indian (men’s) cricket team left standing.

Now, don’t go getting hot under the collar or petticoats — whatever. In this year of women’s empowerment, let the female species blossom, may her tribe grow. But here’s the irony: in India (especially in the North), the sex ratio increasingly favours men. On Indian television, it’s the reverse: for every half man, there are two women! The French have a saying (albeit in a very different context): cherchez la femme (literally,‘find the female’). No need for that on the box: it’s Women’s Day every day on TV.

Shouldn’t all right-minded women and wrong-minded men, applaud television’s feminine mystique? Yes, yes, and triple yes. But, let’s be level-headed. Is this exposure of and to women, helping real women (and men) in the real world? Are the women on television emancipating us? Will today’s girls aspire to be like them tomorrow?

In this country, a girl foetus is routinely scooped out and young girls are dying or sickly because of malnutrition. Women are illiterate, malnourished and in poor health (a recent report indicates that when there’s a shortage of food, the young women in the family eat the least). Meanwhile, the ladies on TV are weighed down by the jewels in their ears.

Women on TV do suffer injustices. They are victims of infidelity, madness, mental torture, physical abuse, widowhood, sexual harassment... But they’re still dressed to the nines, dripping diamonds like beads of sweat and, one might add, in the very pink of good health. The gap between the lives of women and TV’s female characters is widening into an unbridgeable chasm. Men might be from Mars and women from Venus, but our TV characters belong to another solar
system.

It’s not just TV serials and TV sitcoms which are creating and perpetuating an extraordinary myth about the modern Indian woman and the world she inhabits. Look at recent advertisements with the prime time soaps. Along with Mel Gibson, learn what women want, or men think they want, or multinationals think they want.
Tons of shampoo, for starters. In many shades and varieties. There’s Clinic and Sunsilk and Vatika shampoos for long (always long because that’s the Indian tradition), lustrous black (always black because... you got it, that too is the Indian tradition) hair. There’s also Breeze 2 in 1 and...all in the space of a few minutes. A case of hair, there and everywhere (unforgivable old pun).

So hair head’s the list of concerns in the ad woman’s world. Next comes her complexion — and cleanliness. There’s Ariel, and Surf Excel, Lux soap with Rani Mukherjee’s arms and body, Savlon antiseptic, Nycil powder, Fair and Lovely soap, Fair Glow cream, Godrej Nikhar Soap, Lux Sun Screen (notice how cleverly the concept of sunburn has been translated into a colour bar)... All these commercials feature women and sometimes children. Women in almost every instance wear a saree, but nothing terribly demure about it: they flaunt that midriff better than any actress. Aha. An interesting, subversive thought: if cleanliness is godliness then god is most assuredly a woman.

What other preoccupations does a woman have? It’s an eclectic mix: Eno and Pudeen Hara for the stomach (usually his stomach!), Itchguard for itches, Bajaj fans (with a bevy of belles from the village), Philips cooker, Revive starch, etc. Of course, women are majorly into clothes and so you have the Kyunki.. and Kahani... women modelling in ads for Parag and Tarang... sarees!

Thus, in the world according to TV commercials, women care about their own looks and appearances only a little more than their near and dear ones, and then they worry about food. Pretty accurate, wouldn’t you say? At one level. But at another, this simply and firmly keeps the woman where she always was: in the house as a wife and mother. The resurgence of family dramas has its mirror image in advertising. You’ll see few independent, working women dressed in churidars or pants (and then they’re the baddies). Instead, there’s
the housewife in six yards of cloth, cooking, cleaning, and caring. Don’t we just love her for it.

Some ads featur men during the same prime time serials: All Out for mosquitoes, LG AC, Castrol GTX car oil, McDonald’s, Ring guard cream, Godrej Hair Dye, Colgate toothpaste (why do you seldom see a woman in a toothpaste ad?). Dettol soap. Shah Rukh Khan. The composite man emerging from these TV comercials is one who wants a cool night’s rest on a full stomach with Shah Rukh’s looks, but no bad breath or body odour — dreaming about a smooth running car.And no mosquitoes bite.

TV women and men seem awful far away. Mars and Venus are closer.