Abstract
Television commercials have the potential to impact viewers’ beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors by providing models from which viewers can learn. Indeed, research has demonstrated that contact with the media can influence viewers’ beliefs about sex roles, as well as attitudes about politics, violence, and other aspects of the social world. Media usually depicts the desire rather than the reality. In the current study, a qualitative content analysis of eight top-ranked Pakistani TV advertisement of the year 2017 was conducted, with the purpose to identify the stereotyped portrayal of women in both contents and visual of Pakistani TVCs (objectification, irrelevant media sexualization, infanticization, victimization, and domestication) as presented by MediaWatch (1981). The results highlighted that all selected advertisements implied the same type of stereotypical themes in both contents of visuals of ads. Almost 50% of TVCs visual objectified women as compared to 40% of the written content, followed by 20% both visuals and written content used women seductive expressions to sell their product and finally 15% of visual and written content present women in the domestic sphere and bound in relationships. In conclusion, objectification is the most recurrent theme, displayed and practiced in all of the selected advertisements where women are shown as mere objects to gain attention, to please, and to increase the audience of a product.

Arooj Arshad, Saima Ghazal, Dr. Noshina Saleem. (2021) Being Women, how I’m categorized: Deconstructing Women Portrayal in Pakistani Advertisement Landscape, Journal of the Research Society of Pakistan, Volume-58, Issue-2.
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