How The Recent Perfume Ad Promotes Rape Culture In India

A new ad from a perfume company has crossed the entryway of being humorous or entertaining with their downright sexist take. The ad has been criticised by social media users who say it “promotes gangrape.” Depicting four men and one woman the ad starts with a dialogue saying, “Hum chaar woh ek? Shot kaun lagayega?”

The woman heaves a sigh of relief - much to the maker’s distorted sense of humour - as the guy takes a bottle of perfume and puts it on. The company has also released another similar ad with the same slogan. 

The Good Place’s Jameela Jamil has once opined that while it is true that #notallmen harm women but at the same time, do #allmen feel the need to assert a woman’s safety? Replying to this thread, several women opened up about their survival stories. One of them said, “I was attacked by a man in a bar. The man was a guest of my male friend. Afterwards, the friend told me that I wasn’t the first and his female friends refused to spend time with the culprit. We stopped being friends that day.”

Suggested Reading: 5 Non-Fiction Books to Help Understand the Grim Realities of Rape and Rape Culture

There have to be some regulations for ads. Even though the director seemingly took an unfunny but downright inappropriate and misogynistic “creative license” not to depict actual rape, the fear for a second that all women felt, was real. The second ad begins with a couple in a bedroom. Four friends of the man enter the room and ask the woman the same question. “Shot kaun lagayega?” The ad then revealed that they were just asking if they could use the perfume kept on the table in their room.

It is nothing short of a pathetic advertisement that seeks to promote gang rape. The use of “shot” along with the expression of the woman speaks volumes about corrupting masculinity. Some users have said that not only the advertisement but the product too needed to be banned forever. 

Sending a chill down every woman’s spine, the advertisement makers through a sickening portrayal, made everyone including men uneasy to watch it. Having reduced the status of a woman to rape and/or eve-teasing, what message does the offensive and “cheap”  ad deliver to children? 

The ad regulator took to Twitter stating, “Thank you for tagging us. The ad seriously violates the ASCI Code and is against the public interest. We took immediate action and notified the advertiser to suspend the ad.” But how is that enough? Is it not true that Indian Media has kept sympathising with rapists and rape culture?

There is more to news than what meets the eye and while the subject is the focus of much media attention and outrage, what lurks beneath the surface is an implicit bias towards rapists. This produces a double bind where rapists are simultaneously depicted as social aberrations yet still are depicted as members of society who deserve the benefit of the doubt. Is it not sad? Is it not a matter of concern? Although it is well-documented in books and newspaper headlines how the media’s treatment of crimes impacts public perceptions, attitudes and even behaviours, the “Indian Media” through advertisements like these, communicate that rapists are normal members of the society and their plight ought to be “understood” with at par of the survivors’. 

So, a significant portion of the coverage of rape in India across the media always surrounds a woman’s “honour” isolating the real problem from the social context. The ad is reductive of a survivor’s trauma and absolves a perpetrator of accountability. This way, the media undermines the structural nature of rape in India. Failing to cover rape as a widespread violent outcome of power differences between a rapist and a survivor, the narrative of ads like these downplay the severity of the social problem by being a part of the problem. 

The views expressed are the author's own.