Image and portrayal of women in Lebanon

by Sawsan Mehdi, Society for the Protection of Nature, Lebanon

During the war in Lebanon, the role of women was of great importance. They were largely responsible
for the subsistence of their families. Women who were withdrawn or displaced to suburbs and villages
queued for gas, water and bread while men were forced to stay  at home for fear to be kidnapped. So
women left their houses to seek for work such as sewing, house-keeping and house-cleaning for absentee
owners, etc.

In the meantime, a deterioration of the mass-media was increasing with this total disorder caused by the
war, revealing to what extent the real image of women was ignored or neglected. A woman was
represented as the usual housewife or as a sex symbol, while in reality she was facing the dangers of war,
and lately, exposed to the worst tortures in Israelian prisons in South Lebanon.

And now as the war is over, this image in the mass-media did not change. As you walk all along the
mainroads and even the narrowest alleyways in big cities, advertising billboards for food, home tools,
nightclubs and restaurants, even men's  wear run women halfnaked and sexy in order to promote their
products.

Beautiful, slim and highclass "europeanized" women exhibit the most expensive clothes in a time where
the economic crisis is making everyone's life worse.

Apart from billboards, TV remains of course the main way of communication. Here women are not only
a sex symbol, the idea of using her goes beyond this. To compare and evaluate products at the expenses
of a human being. Let's take two examples that I see everyday on TV in Lebanon.

A Chinese woman is holding a tuna fish can. She has a very white skin, an unusual colour! The ad says
"The secret of delights of this tuna fish is in her whiteness".The second one shows a young man talking to
a woman on the phone. The woman is wearing a nightdress. Suddenly the man stops talking to her and
begins to eat a Galaxy ice-cream, ignoring completely the woman. The ad says: "Why have cotton when
you can have silk!!!" And many more of these "specimen".

More than 75% of the population which represent mainly the working class and some organizations are
fed up with such ads. Reasons vary from religious to educational and economic ones. In regions were the
majority are muslims you can notice that one poster is not exposed with the same degree of naked-body
images as in Christian regions. In case were such poster are present reactions were limited to paint or
tear these billboards, and sometimes comments were seen under the posters.

On the other hand the high class society claim that such kind of advertising posters indicate the rate of
"one country's civilisation and development!!!"

Actually all billboards are on their way to be removed, not to protect people from such ads that cause
accidents, but simply to regulate them in a country from now on completely devoted to tourism, business
and banking.