Pakistani advertisements have made their own mark over the years. Be it outsourcing popular meme content, highlighting pertinent societal issues or even reinforcing certain stereotypes, these ads have proven to have immense power when it comes to audience reflection. Often big brands dominate this arena and the ad that I found was no different. Shan Foods released its advertisement titled #OneBiryaniOneFamily in 2018. The four minute clip takes a dig at gender stereotypes rather differently and for a start, this can be considered to be sufficiently progressive.
The plot of the ad revolves around a boy who has reached his love interest's house to meet her brothers and ask for her hand in marriage. The video begins on a pretty revolutionary note, if we may say so. Normally, the way "rishta" culture works is that the boy with his family comes to the girls house where mostly the formers parents evaluate the girl, question her etc. Yet, here indeed the boy has arrived at the girls house but he is not here to meet her and judge her but rather is here for his own judgment. The girls brothers are evaluating the boy, viewing whether he is fit to be their brother-in-law or not. Even one of the brother's says "Behen ki pasand hai, hum pass karein ge tou damad banega". The dynamic between both the genders has shifted here whereas in most ads and in real, the girl is at the receiving end of an answer and is being carefully examined, here the same is happening but this time with the guy,
An excellent job is done at subverting gender stereotypes by placing the boy in the kitchen to impress the girls brothers. In majority of the advertisements that we see, it is almost always the woman that is in the kitchen whether it is to impress her potential in laws or working after marriage, the kitchen and more broadly domesticity is always seen as a female domain. It is always the woman who is presented as this perfect model in the kitchen. However, by sending a man to the kitchen to cook biryani and that too for his future in laws, this ad does away with the idea of the kitchen being a female only space to some extent and also depicts that men can indeed cook and put in effort to bond well with their in-laws.
Yet, as much as this advertisement tends to break away from traditional gender roles, it also ends up reinforcing certain stereotypes related to masculinity. It shows the ideal man as being physically strong and intense with a muscular build. These were the characteristics assigned to the girls brothers while her lover was slim and and of short height. Quite evidently when the boy arrives at her house, her brothers and uncle are disappointed to see a man that they would consider far from the realm of an ideal one. As one of the brothers points to him and sarcastically remarks "Sher ka bacha?", clearly he is anything but that. Interestingly, by the end this perception can also be seen as shifting as after having his rather tasty biryani, the uncle and brothers get emotional and sob while accepting the boy wholeheartedly. One of the brothers at the end even says "Sher hai yeh Sher". Crying is something that these men would consider extremely feminine but a shift in gender roles by the boy cooking for them and they eating it and loving it can also render a new understanding of masculinity by allowing them to be vulnerable.
Moving away from the traditional realm then, this advertisement by Shan serves as a positive example of ads overthrowing certain rigid ideals of society.