Shifting Perspectives and Rethinking Representation: Putting Tinted Lens on the Marketing Male Gaze

Written by Aanchal Chauhan ,

Edited by Khushboo M.

Let’s start with a little game, picture one of the most memorable marketing campaigns with women in it. Do you agree with its narrative? Do you wonder if a woman created it? Have you contemplated if there's room for a different portrayal of women? Has it occurred to you that the whole production might be unnecessary? Or are you solely focused on the result, indifferent to who features in the ads? If any of these questions gave you pause, even momentarily, perhaps it's worth exploring the concept of the 'Male gaze' from a marketing perspective.?

Many might believe that the Male Gaze is an exclusively academic theory of analysis and perception. The concept was first mentioned by British filmmaker and feminist film theorist, Laura Mulvey and it revolutionized the creative community by legitimizing the field of feminist film study. Since then, the concept has been interpreted, evolved, matured, and adopted across industries. Admittedly, the ratio of Academicians, filmmakers and marketers is blatantly imbalanced in their contribution to its development. In an ironic conjunction of happenstance, the marketing media seems to dominate in terms of employing the male gaze in much of its production and representations.??

If one were to make a list of advertisements or marketing campaigns where the portrayal of women was decisively unfavourable, it could turn into a full-fledged hardbound book. Coincidently, the questionable representation of women and feminine community in media is majorly correlated with a male audience. It’s almost as if the ads are prompting that ‘If you want a man to buy something, make sure a woman sells it!’ Funnily enough, even with plenty of women gracing the screens of marketing campaigns, there still seems to be a dearth of female perspective behind the lens.??

Brands and marketing professionals have tried to justify their creative strategies by citing notions like consumer behaviour and purchasing power. On the contrary, this merely enunciates the fact that their market research is only an extension of archaic preconceived notions quantified with biased statistics. If one were to talk numbers, reports very categorically state that 78% of women make the purchasing decisions in their household and contrary to popular expectations it doesn’t limit to grocery shopping.??

Women are placed alongside the products being promoted in the advertisements that are often demarcated as part of the mise en scène. Women being reduced to inanimate status in advertisements isn’t new, though it honestly has gotten old as a viewer. Some classic examples include male hygiene and grooming products which do not necessarily require female depiction in their campaigns since they are not the primary intended audience; but still employ women imagery to sell their products all the same.?

Seagram’s Imperial Blue’s “Men will be Men” campaign is very well-known among the Indian audience for releasing campaigns that represent both men and women in a dubious light. The advertisement series makes a point to reiterate the notion of women being mere objects of desire while men are proffered the opportunity to disregard accountability in light of being perverse, as people who simply act on rudimentary instincts.??

Some might remember the online outrage that erupted over the Layer’r Shot body spray campaign back in the summer of 2022. The campaign blatantly promoted rape culture with suggestive dialogues and ‘quirky’ puns foregoing the casual sexism often seen in such ads. What’s worse is, that the campaign explicitly shows women being wary of being sexually assaulted or harassed by the group of men making the comments implying that the narrative was a very deliberate decision. Makes one seriously wonder if a woman was ever present at any stage of the campaign’s execution. If they were, did they have no power over vetoing against the concept at all? ?

In instances where the women are not objectified, they are severely undermined in their faculties and portrayed as secondary characters even when they are the target audience. The representation of female hygiene products like sanitary napkins in marketing is treated as a taboo even while they are broadcast across the biggest screens. Starting from names like ‘Whisper’ (as though it is a scandal to mention menstruation out loud in proper society) to using thin blue liquid as a substitute for period blood and portraying unrealistic scenarios, the campaigns don’t get better. It propels one to ponder if things would be different if more women had creative authority over the campaigns.??

Furthermore, despite various data points claiming that perusing women in a product promotion has a higher chance of gaining traction, there is a disparity in the supposed opinions of the male audience. Men might love looking at women advertising their products, but God forbid men to be associated with anything even slightly ‘feminine’ or better yet, the women giving the ‘gendered’ products a go.??

Claiming that the questionable portrayal of women is directly proportional to increased sales is quite simply a gross oversight on the part of the brands. There have been abundant examples on the marketing directory to refute the plausibility of that argument. Many brands have done their part in bringing about change in the market with commendable campaigns that fight the stereotypes of the male gaze very creatively. Some had to spell it out for the audience, while others were subtle about their intentions.??

Dove’s #StopTheBeautyTest campaign called out the unceremonious discrimination against women based on ‘conventional’ beauty benchmarks during matchmaking in Indian society. Inspired by real-life stories, the campaign brought the point home by perusing real people in the videos. The narrative projected a solemn tone while also making the viewers as uncomfortable as the women were made to feel in the respective situations. In another video released last year, the brand makes a poetic commentary on India’s penchant for imposing conventional beauty standards on teenage girls.??

Walking on a relatively concurrent path, Vim decided to counteract subtle patriarchy in their Nazariya badlo campaign. In yet another matchmaking meeting scenario, the girl cheekily offers to ‘help’ the man with the dishes when he offers to ‘help’ her in the kitchen as he allusively implied it to be the wife’s duties. The campaign advocates for equality and individuality in relationships without making loud proclamations and yet serves its purpose just the same.??

There has been a shift in the principal consumer demographic mainly consisting of GenZ and Millennials where the majority won’t settle for a brand that isn’t on a similar moral wavelength as them. It has been often repeated in the marketing circulars that the brand needs to resonate with the consumers to sustain its name and business. At the end of the day, marketing and advertising are essentially about building brand reputation and bringing profit to the brand. As a consumer, it isn’t farfetched to wish that your bucks don’t fund problematic ideals. In the case of the brands mentioned above, there’s no doubt that a significant number of praising viewers eventually converted to brand consumers based on the campaigns.??

It is not rare for a marketing campaign to go viral today, but it takes the campaign to have some heart for it to stay with people. It is too soon to hope for a spotless slate in the creative rooms (though it should have been achieved by now, given we’ve been at it for over centuries) but the fortitude of the marketing industry to balance the scales also hasn’t been in vain either. There is definite rhyme and reason in the aspiration that one day, not only will the marketing domain traverse beyond the hierarchy of needs but also the manacles of gendered gaze. Though that day might come sooner if the marketing industry adopts ‘all hands-on deck’ ideology and makes an effort to sincerely balance the gender ratio in the decision-making rooms. With more women helming the creative direction and execution of marketing campaigns, the tide will turn to make way for a more consenting and equitable representation on and beyond the screens. This will eventually lead to fostering stronger connect with consumers of today, who consider a brand’s value system to be a huge part of the brand’s appeal.?

* mise en scene (/?mi?z ?? ?s?n/) Noun+??

- The arrangement of the scenery, props, etc. on the stage of a theatrical production or on the set of a film.?

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