Save the Animals, Exploit Women
by Kelly
Warning: some pictures NSFW
Renee at Womanist Musings has posted on several occasions about PETA’s less-than-savory behavior. Not only do they have a girl-on-girl make-out tour (to bring attention to the fact that meat can decrease a man’s virility?) but they’ve had PETA demonstrators dress up as members of the Ku Klux Klan to make some inane point about cruelty towards animals. This stuff makes throwing flour on Lindsay Lohan look innocent fun.
What’s the point of exploiting human beings for the sake of animal rights? Okay, so animals deserve to be treated nicely & fairly, I couldn’t argue with that. However, I don’t really see the point of furthering oppression against women and black people just to raise awareness for your cause, no matter how respectable that cause is. Many supporters of PETA claim that this is an effective way of getting publicity and media attention. They overlook the fact that many causes have had very successful ad campaigns that do not exploit or harm other people. For example, the truth campaign targets the cigarette industry with inventive television and magazine advertisements. Why can’t PETA take a page from their book and find similar ways of getting attention?
I googled some of PETA’s ad campaigns, and what I found was disturbing. I didn’t really realize the extent to which they’ve consistently used sexism in their ads:
The only ads with men in them depicted men only from the chest-up, exploited homosexual couples, or pictured Steve-O from the Wildboyz (who, it could be argued, would go naked for just about any reason).
If you know of any other PETA campaigns that are sexist, racist, or just plain insensitive, let me know. What are your thoughts on PETA? Are there other “charitable” causes that exploit certain groups?
- Dollface
Interesting post about PETA! I haven’t really looked into their advertising campaigns, other than rolling my eyes at some of the more obnoxious ones that make the news. I see what they are trying to do with some of these that you have posted, but a lot of them make me, too, really uncomfortable. This trend in sexualized violence against women in so-called ‘edgy’ advertising may be an attention-grabber but it has reached the point where it crosses the line beyond offensive and into a territory where it’s so prevelant that I think it’s really damaging to women. I’ve seen fashion campaigns like this, too, featuring very young looking men (boys?) in sexually vulnerable positions and this same idea of a very sexualized violence as ‘edgy’ and ‘cool’ just. Rrr. Pisses me off.
I’ve always thought their advertisements were distasteful even during the two years I was a vegetarian. I could never put into words why.
The second advertisement especially upset me for some reason.
I can’t really take PETA seriously and I think it’s because they just plain try way to hard. Their advertisements are so exploitative and their tactics (i.e. dumping flour on Lindsay) are kind of childish. They really do need to take a different approach if they want the general public to see their point of view and not see them as some psycho radical group.
Dollface, have you seen I am an Animal? It’s a documentary HBO made about Ingrid Newkirk, the woman who founded PETA. She discusses her controversial marketing campaigns and the documentary follows her on a few of her rescue missions. It’s pretty interesting.
@ Roxanne — You’re definitely right — for example, the ad with the woman wrapped up in meat packaging — “edgy”, provocative…but also completely tasteless, offensive, and disturbing.
@ Jackie — I’m all for vegetarianism, being a vegan, and even animal rights. I think it’s unfortunate that these good causes are being associated with PETA.
@ Maria — I haven’t seen that documentary, but it sounds really interesting! I’ll have to look it up.
Thanks for the comments!
An excellent article. Frankly I feel very strongly that PETA is more interested in publicity and advancing an uber radical agenda that has nothing to do with the reality of human/animal relationships, especially as relates to “pets”, nor with anything that might be considered true animal welfare.
The timing of your article is interesting, as I have an article that is just today going live. I provided a link to your article in hopes that anyone who looks at mine will also look at yours and be given a little more food for thought about this group and their in my opinion reprehensible behavior.
The One About Why PETA, And Michael Vick Are Both Synonyms For Suck.
Naked women in cages => vegetarianism. Hmm. Yeah, I don’t get it either. Sex sells, but naked women in cages? Is that even sexy??
PETA is and always will be a joke.
When I saw that ad with Steve-O, I immediately thought: “hey, this is the guy who put a fish up his nose and then made it come out of his mouth. This is the guy who took a sea cocumber and jerked (pretending he was masturbating) until something white (who looked like sperm) came out — that white thing was the cocumber’s internal organs. And now Steve-O is trying to tell me that he cares about animal rights? WTF?”.
[...] I recently posted about PETA’s less-than-savory ad campaigns. Here’s a great related article at the Huffington Post. The pictures are somewhat shocking, [...]
There are other differencies between the depicting of the men and the women in the ads than those pointed out by you. Even if Steve-O loves to be naked and stuff and is the only one of the men whos whole body is shown, his posture is very much different than the naked womens’. He jumps joyfully up into the air, happy, free and strong. The homosexual couple seems to be enjoying each other in an intimate moment, and the first picture is one of a man who is giving freedom to the birds in the cage – he’s a hero, with a strong, firm gaze in his eyes. All the women are tragic, objectified, commodified, dead, helpless, in cages and so forth.
So even if there’s a kind of “equality” (since it is not SOLELY naked women in the campaign) it still does not differ one bit from the usual depiction of women. And I’m sure it would be a hell of a lot more effectfull if the roles were reversed – if it were sad men in cages, bound, dead, helpless and so forth, and free, strong, heroic women (there might even be a double message to that, since women actually ARE traded with like animals — for the sex industry ex.). People might actually notice the campaignads because it would be surprising to see men like that (free, strong, happy women are shown in commercials – usually because they’re so happy with their new lipstick/haircolouring options/face lotion that they just have to jump with glee!)
I’m so friggin tired of the so called provocative element in female nudity. It is NOT provocative – it’s tiresome and tired and shows appalling lack of imagination. I’ve largely come to detest even artists who paint nude women – try something new, for gods sake!
By the way – I was horrified by the Steve-O seacucumber-comment. How cruel and insensitive! And to do that just for a joke – I find that totally sick. Makes me think of a passage in my favorite novel (I have to cite from memory, can’t find it in the book): “The boys kill the frogs for fun. But the frogs die in all seriousness.”
(It’s translated from Danish so maybe the point does not come across as supposed to — the ‘in all seriousness’-part. It’s a word-play that’s difficult to translate.)