Mr Shneebly (fake teacher): Rock ain’t about doing things perfect! Who can tell me what it is? Frankie?

Frankie (grade four student): Scoring chicks?

*****

Mr Shneebly: What’s the matter?

Summer (grade four student): You want me to be a groupie! I researched groupie on the Internet. They’re sluts. They sleep with the band.

Mr Shneebly: No that’s not true. They are like cheerleaders.

Summer: I don’t want to be a cheerleader.

These are dialogues from the hilarious film, School of Rock (2003), directed by Richard Linklater. The humour in them is not immediately palpable as the lines have been forced out of context. But that does not hurt the purpose of this article. What is at issue is the refusal of a 10-year-old girl to be a groupie of the school rock band. Summer is appointed band manager finally. Frankie, on the other hand, wonders if being part of a rock band is about “scoring chicks”. An older Summer is likely to argue that this typical male fantasy is improbable as girls are not sitting ducks ready to be spiked. And an older Frankie is likely to realise this too – much to his disappointment perhaps.

But advertisers just refuse to grow up and acknowledge the change in gender dynamics. Little else can explain the selection of “SKORE” as the brand name of a condom.

The word “condom” brings to mind two things – sex and prevention. The manufacturer TTK Enterprises – better known as makers of pressure cookers with the tagline, “Jo biwi se kare pyaar woh Prestige se kaise kare inkar?” – hardly emphasise the preventive aspects of SKORE as a condom.

Sex forms the background and the foreground in all advertisements of SKORE condoms, or any condom for that matter. In other words, the context and the pretext for naming the condom brand – SKORE is sexual.

There cannot be doubt that the word “SKORE” is mainly influenced by the verb “score” – the primary meaning of which is “to win a point in a game”, say in cricket or football. In case of cricket, particularly in the contemporary version of the sport, it is comprised in the longitudinal bat hitting the increasingly disempowered ball. In case of football, it is comprised in the longitudinal leg kicking the inert leather. Both cricket and football were originally played by men and continue to be dominated by them.

It is not unreasonable to assume, then, that the bat and the leg are extensions of the phallus in the public arena of sports. Thus, the verb “score” connotes phallic victory. And the word “SKORE” indicates phallic achievement against women who are visualised as disempowered and inert within the confines of SKORE condom advertisements.

Consider an earlier advertisement of SKORE condom with the tagline – “Loving is hard Scoring is easy”.

It shows three instances of a man belaboured in love with different girlfriends. The first instance is that of carrying bagfuls during shopping with the girlfriend, the next is that of paying the bill for both at a restaurant and the final is that of pushing a broken down car while the girlfriend sits pretty at the wheel.

As a result, love becomes hard for the man. Subsequently, exchange of glances on a beach between the man and another woman leads to a door closing on the gleeful man with the faint image of a semi-clad woman on the bed behind him.

The voiceover informs the viewer that scoring is easy.

The problem with such depiction is twofold. First, men just like women can be stereotyped so that they appear equally repulsive. Love then becomes hard for women, too. Second, if love is hard for women then, by the logic of the advertisement, it is easy to score men for women too. But this deduction will be unpalatable for the patriarchal structure that generates and consumes such advertisements.

Clearly, creative heads behind the SKORE condom advertisement must realise that if love were a game, then men and women must be treated as equal opponents in it with equal freedom to score against each other.

Any assumption that contradicts this premise is likely to violate the principle of gender equality and fair representation. Also, relatively greater focus on the man in the advertisement seems to stand on the supposition that men initiate interactions that lead to sex and, therefore, are the principal buyers of condoms. Since the very act of such purchase is a recognised code for initiation of physical intimacy.

This adorable Durex condom advertisement is highly recommended for those who harbour such presumption.

TTK, which was involved in the manufacturing of Durex in India till 2012, must take a lesson from this advertisement sensitive to the ongoing social change.

That those in charge of publicity for SKORE condoms are still unschooled about the advance of gender parity can be gauged from the current advertisement of the contraceptive.

If there was too much of the male figure in the earlier advertisement, there is too little of the male figure in the current one.

Instead, there is too much of the female figure now – bending and stretching suggestively inside a gymnasium. The absence of the male figure from the screen at these moments conveys to the male viewer the comfort of exclusive access to libidinal stimulation. Argument over such titillation is not the objective of this piece. But what must be condemned is the denial of visual pleasure effected by not subjecting the male body to such twists and turns.

Are women not entitled to the libidinal stimulation that is so abundantly produced for men? Of course, yes.

Why is it then that their pleasure is not catered to? It is perhaps because, as has been pointed out already, women are simply not imagined as proactive in the practice of scoring and, therefore, buying condoms. Such hypothesis can only cost condom manufacturers a booming market comprised of financially-independent women.