It’s so cold outside my car has developed a perpetual cough. I’m all the way downtown, circling the block around the Television Bureau in search of an indoor parking space, before the heat stutters on.

I park under the second building over, satisfied that whatever else I’ll feel at 11 o’clock at night, after several hundred commercials, at least I won’t be cold.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ I say to the other judges. I haven’t done a show like this before; my suspicion of awards shows is well-known among my friends. As the introductions are made, I picture the parking lot next door; it is an old, dark, low-ceilinged, stalactite-ridden labyrinth. I apologize again for being late. ‘Just another minute,’ I say. ‘I have to move my car.’ Such is the joy of being a woman in the ’90s.

Quandary: My guess is that in these same ’90s there are almost as many women in advertising as there are men. Does this mean that women should be equally represented on our awards panels? Would it change anything? Who cares anyway?

As one of two women on the Bessies judging committee these are more than rhetorical questions.

Interest in women’s involvement in these ceremonies is unusually high this spring, so I have weighed my participation carefully. In the end, I decide it is worth doing because I have many questions about awards, like how it’s possible to win a Silver, when there is no Gold or Bronze. And because I believe my vote counts for something.

Not long ago, I took a two-and-a-half-year sabbatical. During that time I looked into the situation of women in advertising for a local magazine. Glancing through some of my material, the editor said, ‘If you do this right, you’ll never get another advertising job.’ I didn’t write the piece.

Chicken? Maybe. But I tell myself it’s because I felt more could be changed by doing than by criticizing. I went back to work and am now told without irony that I am ‘one of the really great women writers in the business.’

Why the qualifier? Am I better or worse at my craft for being female? I doubt it. For me, being a woman is like having white skin; a fact, not a choice. It influences my work, but doesn’t define it. And it influenced how I saw other people’s work in this year’s show.

Frankly, I was glad to see that there was less t&a than usual. I appreciated that every woman wasn’t a goddess, every voice-over wasn’t male. (Even beer, usually the most grievous offender from a woman’s point of view, seems to have changed its style.) Whether this is the result of consciousness-raising or just the shedding of some tired old habits, I can’t say.

Still, the portrayal of women in commercials did come up now and again. One case in particular caused some consternation. It was for a packaged goods product not famous for its compelling advertising. For the first time that I can remember, the work was different and fresh. Everyone in the room recognized the leap forward. Unfortunately, it leapt in a way that the men thought was fun and the women thought was cheap. The discussion was intense.

Did I think that the advertising would sell the product? Very possibly. Did I find it tawdry and demeaning? Absolutely. So did I vote for or against?

Ours is too often an industry that falls back on stereotypes, on the familiar, the non-threatening, the easy to absorb. At its best it tries to present the usual in startling fashion. To grip the attention of the viewer, to inform, to entertain. I know that our ultimate goal is to sell stuff. If the idea is sound and supports the decorative use of a woman to sell more product, is it a good ad? Not to me. I voted against.

After all, we are none of us purely advertising people. Some of us are women. Or parents. Or bicycle racers. We bring our prejudices to the table. If we have some deeper knowledge and see a bike ad that strikes us as false, we vote it down even if the idea is good.

Over the weekend, questions of gender stand between me and the screen only occasionally. When they do, I point it out. There is debate. Sometimes the opinions change, sometimes they don’t.

Everyone in the room has something personal to contribute. There are advocates for the magnificently scored, defenders of the beautifully shot, idea purists. The biases don’t always come from the obvious places.

It occurs to me that any person regardless of gender, religion, color, etc., will choose differently from any other. It’s possible, though unlikely, that a group of nine men would have made identical choices to those we made.

New every year

I went into this thinking there must be some kind of consistency in the standards or the rules from year to year. I now believe that each year’s contest is entirely new. The makeup of the panel will cause it to be so. Judgments are subjective and democratically open to the will of the majority. It will always be this way unless we choose with Ed McCabe who said he wouldn’t judge the Portland Art Director’s Show unless he was the only judge.

So, if we accept that there are significant numbers of women in the business, should they be judges? Short answer: not if they aren’t any good. But there are a lot of women out there doing interesting, effective work. I can’t believe they’re all that hard to find.

No tokens

I’d never suggest putting women on the panel for the sake of having us there. Panels should be made up of the people who are doing the best advertising. Maybe this year’s winners should be next year’s judges; maybe our community is too small for that.

Do I believe that women judges will change the outcome of these competition? Yes, but so will younger judges, out-of-town judges… cats.

janet kestin is creative group head of Ogilvy & Mather, based in Toronto. Kestin has been writing since 1981, taking a two-and-a-half-year child-rearing sabbatical, during which she also did some magazine writing. Her agency career began at Young & Rubicam and includes a sojourns at o&m and Leo Burnett. She has created advertising for Coffee Crisp, Bick’s Pickles, Baci, Laura Secord and authored the cogent Dove litmus campaign.