Is gay window advertising out of the closet?

As advertising reflects society, it strongly captures the changing social mores and mirrors them through various media. Advertisement strikes the emotional chords. It is persuasive communication that helps sell an idea, product or service.

While queer representation infiltrated Indian cinema and television way back in the 1990s, it took almost two decades for the diversity to sway the advertising space.

The first companies to start advertising for the LGBTQ+ community incited wrath — namely tobacco and alcohol companies. Absolut Vodka, a brand that still catches eyeballs for its LGBTQ+ advocacy, came out with full-page back cover ads in The Advocate and After Dark magazines in 1940. Indeed it was a bold move and clearly a sign of solidarity with the community. Several other companies followed in their footsteps and vocalisation was at its peak during the AIDS epidemic. However, such advertising lacked explicitness.

The concept of using below the radar language and symbols targeting specifically queer consumers was referred to as gay window advertising.

A shift in ideology

On the contrary, Ikea took the road less travelled. In 1994, the brand featured a gay couple, shopping for a dining table, the commercial stirred up passionate conversation followed by a sense of commotion. The message was crisp and clear! The 90s saw a significant shift in opinion as a growing number of commercials embraced the community.

“There’s still a long way to go,” says Palash Borha, youth leader at UNAIDS, highlighting that India is a country where people have for long adapted to traditional mindsets and ideologies. Advertising has always been one of the most popular and attention-seeking methods for any information to be dispersed. While many campaigns in the recent past have addressed the issue, including the 2017 Vicks ad featuring transgender rights activist Gauri Sawant that depicts her struggles to adopt an abandoned child, Borha says it is not an easy job and backlash is inevitable. “With time we will see acceptance flowing in quite easily,” he adds.

Fastrack, a youth brand broke the mould in 2013 in India with its lesbian-themed advertising campaign titled ‘Come out of the closet’. The ad encouraged youth to come to terms with their identity and speak about it.

Sumitro Sircar, a queer social media influencer based out of Himachal Pradesh says, “LGBTQ+ representation via advertising has definitely been instrumental in bringing a change, especially in the rural areas. It will take decades to see the parameters of the change but through these ads, people will try to understand the community better. Living as a queer in a metropolitan city is completely different from a village. When I came out to my mother, her reaction was very supportive because somewhere down the line she had a sense. Exposure to information around us is very impactful and the role of advertising becomes important.”

“Representations do not simply represent an already existing reality but are also doors into making new futures possible. Indeed, the terms of representation require novel critical attention today precisely because of their formative and transformative power,” write Tourmaline, Eric A Stanley, and Johanna Burton in the introduction to Trap Door, a critical anthology of writing on trans cultural production and the politics of visibility.

Highly hypocritical

Sanyam Sharma, Marketing Director, Blued India, the world’s largest gay dating social media app, believes that some companies use the queer community as a hot-selling pancake for some pink money or to make controversial ads to gain visibility and to get the name out more, they apologise and they take down such ads, but they never fight for the justice or stand alongside the community.

This is hypocritical of us as an entire society, brands, marketers, political system and systematic homophobia which is all prejudice, adds Sharma. A radical shift can be observed in recent years, the notion of identity is now more fragmented and layered than fixed. The media has laid bare the dichotomy between visibility and acceptance.

Rather than looking at these inclusive commercials as fascinating, the criticism that emerged out of this social constructivism showed how homophobia is systematically traversing society.

Alex Mathew/ Maya the Drag Queen (TEDx speaker, Drag icon, influencer and actor) shares, “I came across an advertisement by Shoppers Stop where they featured a Drag Queen but tell me when did the brand give a gender-neutral changing room. For instance, if I as a Drag Queen go to the outlet and see this
lovely dress that I can wear for my performance. I can’t try the outfit there at the store. So, I can see that this is fake and just a trend.”

Bengaluru-based Alex also suggests that before any of these ads pop up, we need to impart sex education to people and that’s where the effort will be acknowledged.