Home Away from Home with Abi Adeboyejo
Email: abi.adeboyejo@yahoo.com Twitter: @abihafh
When I was much younger, there were certain topics that you did not discuss with anybody in my family. The activities of ‘the birds and the bees’ was one of them. It wasn’t that there was a rule against talking about it at home. In truth no one had much to say about it. With four daughters, my mum taught us at a very early age that you could get pregnant if you dared to look at a boy long enough. The intricate details of the process were never explained to us until we were quite grown up. I doubt that our children will believe such tales these days. They are slowly being corrupted in very subtle ways and many parents don’t even realise it.
I love watching television advertisements; especially the funny ones because they look at the lighter, brighter side of life. I remember one by IKEA, the furniture company where a couple obviously in love where sucking spaghetti from a plate on the floor (as lovers do!). When it was the girl’s turn, she sucked her spaghetti without looking at the plate. She only had eyes for the man. As she slurped her spaghetti the camera fell on what she was eating – it was the shoelace from a very dirty and battered trainer shoe! The advert ended with a plea to tidy up, if not for ourselves, then for others, meaning that if the man had bought IKEA furniture and tidied his house, he would not have had his battered trainer on the living room floor next to a plate of food.
Millions of pounds (and dollars) are spent on advertisements each year because companies realise its power to convince people to spend money on brands they may otherwise not have considered. The war to win our hearts is getting tougher every year and, as people gradually lose their sense of decency, advertisements are getting raunchier each day. Take chocolate adverts. There has to be a woman, usually with dark hair, with full sensuous lips biting into a bar of chocolate. She moves with slow, deliberate movements and a sultry voice in the background suggests that the chocolate will take you to heights you have never been before. This sounds okay, but why must the woman be in her silk nightdress, on her bed with half of her cleavage on show? Why is the bedroom darkened and very slow music playing softly in the background while the sultry voice conveniently fails to tell us of all the calories and fat in the chocolate? Is this a chocolate advert or an advert for something else?
What about car adverts? The best has to be the break dancing car, the Citroen C4. That advert is pure genius and a tribute to Michael Jackson in my opinion. Your regular car advert, however, will involve scenes of the car driving very fast on nice country roads with beautiful scenery. The last scene may be of the car, parked in front of a lovely house, with a beautiful girl dressed in a tight dress, draped over the bonnet of the car. Is this not saying: buy the car get the girl? Why couldn’t the girl be in the driver’s seat, hinting that girls too know how to have fun? And why are half her legs on show (and on a hot bonnet, poor girl)?
It is a forgone assumption that perfume adverts always contain near-naked people, male and female. There is a Dior advert where a famous movie star actually undresses while she walks through a house. We see her clothes dropping to her feet as she swans from room to room. One may argue that we do not actually see anything offensive but I doubt that anyone who has watched the advert will disagree that it has some erotic content. Again, there is a sultry voice telling us about the desire the perfume inspires.
Holiday adverts contain numerous males and females in bikinis and swimming trunks. Perhaps this is understandable because this is an accepted mode of dress at the seaside where the main aim is to get a decent suntan. But must we see couples kissing and caressing each other before we understand that the sun shines brightly in Cyprus? Some adverts for body lotions and creams leave nothing to the imagination. Again, it is usually a girl moisturising her skin after a bath. She usually does this so slowly that you wonder if she will be done by nighttime. Does anyone actually caress their own bodies that way when moisturising? In one advert, the girl takes an inordinate amount of time and just before she finishes, a man appears (her husband, we hope, and not the neighbour!) in just a towel, nuzzles the girl’s neck and smiles like the cat that got the cream while the scene fades away and you finally get a brief view of the cream. Why hint all that physical intimacy just to sell body cream?
Thank God for technology and affluence because more and more families now have some form of satellite or cable television transmission. This means a lot of foreign programmes are available to watch at all hours of the day from all over the world. This also means that people will have access to uncensored advertisements on all sorts of television channels. Many Nigerian parents monitor what their children watch on foreign channels, but how many actually consider the potentially corrupting effects of these uncensored adverts?
Living abroad has made me realise that my kids are going to start asking questions about the birds and the bees a bit sooner than I asked my mum. No television advert or inappropriate marketing is going to steal their innocence, and God willing, they will make good choices when they have to.
Adverts should sell products, not sex. Be aware of inappropriate adverts on TV for young children.
