The latest ads by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) raise questions about the animal rights group’s understanding of the words ethical treatment.
PETA objects loudly to the use of animals as meat while treating women as just that – raw lumps of meat. While its manifesto opposes the use of “living creatures” for entertainment, it’s apparently OK if the living creature is a woman in a bikini.
PETA has a long history of objectifying women in its pro-animal campaigns, and its latest ads are no exception.
Do you love vegetables so much you want to get intimate with them?
That’s the theme of new ads by the group, which perhaps should be renamed Pornographers for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
The ad, which carries the tagline, “Studies Show Vegetarians Have Better Sex,” shows models getting up close and personal not with people they might be having “better sex” with – but with vegetables.
“Why don’t you pick a vegetable and show us how much you love it,” the casting director instructs one of the models.
PETA had wanted the ads shown during this week’s Super Bowl. Fortunately Super Bowl’s ad executives had more sense. Last year’s “Veggie Love” promotion was also declined by NBC despite a $3m offer. The new ads are apparently ‘outtakes’ of auditions for the 2010 ad.
This representation of vegetables as phallic symbols that women can’t resist is just one of many of PETA’s
crude, sexist creations which denigrate women and reduce them to objects for sexual fetish fantasy. In 2006 in its ‘Milk Gone Wild’ campaign, PETA portrayed women as party animals with udders instead of breasts. The “udder babes” sprayed milk on the crowd as men urged them on. It was the first PETA ad I’d seen and I wasn’t sure how depicting women as hybrid human-animals flashing grotesque milk-spurting udders would further their cause. As Kat observed in a comment on Perth Indy Media, “turning a woman into a beast for sexual pleasure”.
Vegans and other animal-rights activists have spoken out against PETA’s sexist approach. Vegansaurus!, a vegan eating/living guide based in the San Francisco Bay Area, described the new ad as “softcore porn masquerading as an anti-animal-cruelty video”. “Whatever the hell the women in lettuce bikinis are supposed to represent? The Worst. Why are you such hypocrites?”
And Deceiver writes:
“How is exhorting young women to get it on with gourds in any way ethical treatment? … are there exceptions in the vegan manifesto about how living creatures aren’t to be exploited for our entertainment?”
PETA’s crude sexism harms the animal rights cause. It also undermines campaigns against objectifying and exploiting women. It’s actions tell women: if you love animals you’ll take your clothes off.
Until PETA understands what ‘ethical treatment’ means, it doesn’t deserve any support.
See also: ‘Pro-vegetarian group treats women like meat’ , Josephine Tovey, SMH
13 Responses
I wrote to PETA via Myspace to tell them that I though their tactics were degrading.
Below is my email:
As much as I am a supporter of PETA, I cannot help but feel annoyed at your constant sexualising of women in your advertisment. It’s degrading and needs to stop. Find other ways to get your message across without also putting the message out there that women are sluts and here for entertainment
And this is their response:
Hey Stacey,
Thanks for writing to us about this. As an organization staffed largely by feminist women, we would not do something that we felt contributed to the very serious problems that women face. Our “naked” protesters and models choose to participate in our actions because they want to do something to make people stop and pay attention. We believe that people should have the choice to use their own bodies to make social statements, and that there is nothing shameful or “wrong” about being naked. This tactic has been used since Lady Godiva rode naked on a horse to protest taxes on the poor in the 11th century.
Activists who choose to bare their skin are dedicated to helping foxes who are electrocuted and skinned by the millions for the fur industry, calves who are torn from their distraught mothers and slaughtered for the meat industry, elephants who are beaten bloody and forced to live in chains year after year in circuses, and the billions of animals who suffer from torture, maddening isolation, starvation, terror, and violent death at the hands of uncaring industries.
Take Ms. Traci Bingham, for example, who posed for our “All Animals Have the Same Parts” ad campaign (http://www.GoVeg.com/feat/tracibee/). She is a deeply committed
vegetarian who is known to millions for her television work, including beating out a platoon of men to excel in an endurance test called “Boot Camp.” She chose to use her body as a political tool to grab public attention for serious animal issues. In this case, Ms. Bingham felt offended by the traditional “meat” posters that treat animals as “parts,” and she wanted to make the point that neither they nor women should be viewed as parts—we are all precious.
We feel that all people should be free to use their minds and bodies as political instruments to bring attention to animal suffering like this, and we appreciate any effort to help those who have no voice. We use all available opportunities to reach millions of people with powerful messages. We have found that people do pay more attention to our racier actions, and we consider the public’s attention to be extremely important. Sometimes this requires tactics—like naked marches and colorful ad campaigns—that some people find outrageous or even “rude,” but part of our job is to shake people up and even shock them in order to initiate discussion, debate, questioning of the status quo, and of course, action. After PETA publicized our “State of the Union Undress,” for example, we were rated the number one “mover” on Yahoo’s search engine, meaning that PETA received the greatest percentage increase of terms searched that day. The current situation is critical for billions of animals, and our goal is to make the public think about the issues. Although some consider our projects that include nudity to be controversial, many women express support for these tactics.
You might find it interesting to consider that it is the societies that allow women to wear revealing clothing in which women have the most rights and the most power. Likewise, it is the societies that punish women for wearing revealing clothing in which women have the fewest rights and the least power. Should women only be allowed to participate in activism if they promise not to show their bodies or use their bodies as political statements? If a person chooses to use his or her physicality and sexuality to convey a message of his or her choosing, aren’t those who would censor him or her, even if their motives are good, also somewhat guilty of disrespect and repression?
PETA does make a point of having something for all tastes, from the most conservative to the most radical and from the most tasteless to the most refined, and this approach has proved amazingly successful—in the more than two decades since PETA was first founded, it has grown into the largest animal rights group in the world, with over 2 million members and supporters worldwide.
We respect your right to disagree with our tactics but hope that you will continue to support projects that you do agree with—please check out our latest campaigns at http://www.peta2.com/TakeCharge.
Thanks for everything that you do for animals, and please let me know if you have any questions!
And of course I had to respond back to this; probarbly could of written something better but here goes:
Christina,
When I see a video clip of two half naked girls being sexual with veggies I don’t go: OOoo I should be a vegetarian; those poor animals.
I never said anything was bad about those women – only your oganisation- I couldn’t give two shits about what people wear or do with their bodies, I don’t have to deal with the consequences for their actions.
A similar campaign was run in New Zealand by a website called NZGirl. To generate women’s knowledge on breast cancer they asked the readers of their online magazine to post pictures of their breasts. Their reason: to let more women know about breast cancer and how to know if you have it. Sure, they got heaps of people who looked on their website, unfortunately there didn’t seem to be too much, if any, information on breast cancer and I could hardly call that effective.
So while you may get lots of attention because of the half nakedness of your campaigns it doesn’t mean it’s doing any good. Pissing off your supporters gets you no where.
PS: Can you stop using celebrities like Dita Von Teese – seriously the woman wears fur yet you use her in your ads? Considering how much you HATE fur wearing people, this just made me laugh.
You’re a bunch of hypocrites: Let’s not use animals for entertainment, but women certainly can be.
Stacey I am applauding you right now!
I no longer support PETA, I actually am turned off by anything they are involved in now, they skew too much to sensationalisitc vapid celebrity-driven promotionalisim under the guise of “being there for the animals”. Their recent marketing in the last few years (not to mention ill-informed anti animal cruelty campaigns) just make me angry.
Really, I think organisations like the RSPCA and other animal welfare groups serve their target audience (ie the animals) much better – and they do it without objectifying women. People should support these other organisations instead.
PETA, you can’t be serious. So what if someone chooses to use their own body for this campaign? If you can’t see how this relates to women being objectified, then your feminist staff need to go back and do Feminism 101.
I have two daughters growing up in this world and this makes me sick. I can teach them why I don’t eat animals or wear fur, without them being exposed to this kind of crap. It’s not harmless. We are already seen as throw away objects, play things for men and that we don’t exist beyond our physical attributes. While yes, it’s awful what happens to animals, damaging media images like this contribute to an attitude towards women that includes domestic violence, rape and murder, at the extreme end of the spectrum.
Pull your heads in and realise you will get nowhere towards your goals to help animals, but will be sure to damage more women as a result of it. I’m sure that thousands will see the light and stop eating a steak because you portrayed a carrot as a penis and a zucchini as a dildo. Seriously, your ads have always bothered me, but this one makes me physically ill.
“Activists who choose to bare their skin are dedicated to helping foxes who are electrocuted and skinned by the millions for the fur industry, calves who are torn from their distraught mothers and slaughtered for the meat industry, elephants who are beaten bloody and forced to live in chains year after year in circuses, and the billions of animals who suffer from torture, maddening isolation, starvation, terror, and violent death at the hands of uncaring industries.”
Someone needs to define the word ‘dedicated’ for Sophie Monk: http://www.peta.org/features/sophie-monk-vegetarian.aspx
http://www.ecorazzi.com/2008/08/26/peta-supporter-sophie-monk-gets-caught-with-kfc-chicken-in-hand/
I wonder which version of the legend sees Lady Godiva exercising her choice to dry hump the contents of ye olde vegie crisper in order to demonstrate her empowerment as she uses her the political tool of her body to convey her activism?
IF PETA WOULD SPEND THE MONEY THEY SPEND ON THIS VERY TASTELESS & DEGRADING GARBAGE & SPENT IT ON THE ANIMALS THEY KILL THEN I WOULD SUPPORT THEM. IT’S A KNOWN FACT PETA KILLS MORE ANIMALS THAN ANYONE BECAUSE THEY DON’T WANT ANYONE TO HAVE ANY ANIMALS, THIS INCLUDES GUIDE DOG’S,POLICE DOG’S, DOG’S THAT HELP PEOPLE WITH AUTISM,SEIZURES, ECT. PETA NEEDS TO BE STOPPED.
Thanks Stacey for letting us know what you wrote to PETA and what their response was. I’ve supported PETA for years, but their sexist ads and campaigns have bothered me hugely, and I’ve never understood how they can justify them. I think their response to you shows they really have absolutely no understanding of the damage their sexist ads are doing to women (and therefore also to men, and also to the animal rights movement). The argument they used about societies where women are allowed to wear revealing clothing being the societies in which women have the most power was very poorly thought out, I think. What would they say next – that if women walked around naked then they would have even more power! Like Kirsten said, their so-called feminist staff need to go back and do Feminism 101. Or alternatively they could just use some common sense and work it out! I’m feeling really torn about whether or not to continue to support PETA, considering that they do so many absolutely fantastic things for animals, but if I do I will definitely give much more support to animal rights groups who use non-sexist methods. Thanks again Stacey for posting that info, and to the other people who have commented. It’s nice to know that there are other people who feel the same way.
I agree with your disgust with PETA. BUT I urge you to take these photos from PETA off your website. They do more to promote PETA and pornography than anything else. People do not need to see these images.
A. Strahan, I can see your point but unfortunately a lot of people ‘don’t get it’ unless examples are provided. Melinda could go into detail describing PETA’s methods and the images, but a picture paints a thousand words. If the images weren’t provided, anyone interested in this topic would simply google the video, then they would see a whole lot more. At least this way Melinda isn’t directing traffic to their website.
vonhilda, have a look at this organisation who is much more deserving of your support. They manage to advocate on behalf of animals without resorting to demeaning women in the process: http://www.mercyforanimals.org/
Cobralia – thank you very much for the link posted above – the other day I received an unsolicited letter from PETA and after reading what they had described as occurring in China regarding domestic animals I was all ready to donate money – I then saw this latest posting from MTR and will now support this other organisation who does similar work, thank you.
I also think it is extremely naive of the organisers at PETA to think that this imagery will encourage increased support, especially from older people who well remember a time when social causes stood on their own merits and were not promoted by pushing images of semi-naked women simulating various sexual activities. PETA doesn’t get my money for the foreseeable future.
Thanks Cobralia for the link to Mercy for Animals. Like you said they are much more deserving of support. I cannot speak highly enough of the work Mercy for Animals are doing (I think their undercover investigators deserve a medal).
I’m still totally amazed that PETA claimed to Stacey that they are staffed largely by feminist women. I guess it’s finally time I gave up on them because unfortunately it seems that they are just never going to get it.
[MARKED AS SPAM BY ANTISPAM BEE]
It’s truly sad that PETA has been able to get away with such blatant misogyny for so many years. The irony is that their defense of it is based on the same mentality that they critique–the ends justify the means. Somehow it is supposed to be acceptable to use women’s bodies as the means to the greater end of stopping violence against animals. But of course all that their campaigns do is reinforce the same objectifying mentality that lies at the root of the exploitation of women and other-than-human animals and the entire natural world.