AVPW’s Cut The Games Anti-Award: PETA’s Big Sexism Problem
Posted on | January 27, 2009 |
I usually try to ignore PETA’s antics because they are counterproductive and just plain silly. I’d like to think that the many celebrities that follow PETA around like the second coming of Jesus are clueless to their completely misogynistic and demeaning advertising campaigns, but I know better. In fact, it’s many of these celebrities that help them run these insensitive campaigns that provoke little thought or empathy for the animals they are trying to protect.
There are numerous accounts of PETA’s completely abhorrent record of sexist ad campaigns. For example, there was the demonstration with the pregnant woman posed on all fours to somehow urge people to “Go Vegetarian.” Then there was the ad that likened the division of meat in a cow’s body to the division of meat in a woman’s body. PETA decided to use sex dolls in Thailand to protest KFC, pushing the message “KFC Blows.”
Today news was released that PETA’s ad campaign they wished to air during the Superbowl was pulled due to its latent sexuality. The ads featured women preparing to perform sexual acts with vegetables to promote the idea that vegetarians make better lovers. Page Six reports:
NBC pulled the plug on a PETA pro-veggie commercial planned for the Super Bowl because it “depicts a level of sexuality exceeding our standards,” according to NBC Universal’s advertising standards executive, Victoria Morgan. The ad, which carries the tagline, “Studies Show Vegetarians Have Bet ter Sex,” shows lingerie-clad stunners getting “intimate” with vegetables. One shot depicts an actress “rubbing [her] pelvic region with pumpkin.” Says a PETA rep: “PETA’s veggie ads are locked out, while ads for fried chicken and burgers are allowed, even though these foods make Americans fat, sick and boring in bed.”
The fact remains that PETA’s sole intent in all of their work is to get free publicity, like this, to air their commercials. Which is why I refuse to put one of their ads on here in either print or video form. I thought about not even talking about this, but because PETA could always use a good talking-to, I changed my mind.
For far too long PETA has been a force for sexism in this world. Instead of reaching out to the millions of feminists and social justice workers to meet on issues of animal population control and ethical treatment of farm animals, PETA has trampled over the very notion if equality time and time again, showing that it is not interested in any brand of justice but it’s own egotistical kind.
The use of the female form in the male gaze has been used time and time again to promote beer, cars and hell, even shaving products, but for a group that claims to be based on the ethical treatment of living things, PETA surely misses the mark. Sure naked women get attention, but isn’t that the force that we should be fighting against, not using it to gain notoriety. What’s more this time is that it is using female sexuality to try and lure people to becoming vegetarians. This isn’t one of those “using misogyny to show misogyny” type things. This is plain old sexism.
I highly suggest you watching “I Am An Animal: The Story of Ingrid Newkirk and PETA.” It’s an HBO Documentary that details the founder’s life and the organization’s background. Most telling in this documentary is not the outrageous tactics that garner absolutely no support and gain absolutely no ground, but the actions they take when they have the opportunity to treat animals ethically. In the documentary there is a dog that has been left outside by its owners. As part of a program to “feed” these dogs and urge their owners to bring them indoors, Newkirk takes the dog back to PETA where it is deemed that the dog has heart worm–a treatable condition. Instead of giving the dog the medicine it needs and then adopting it out, Newkirk and PETA decide to euthanize the animal–an animal that I’m sure would rather have had a loving home. So even when PETA is given the opportunity to treat animals ethically, they fail to do so, focusing instead on having outrageous parades of naked women to draw attention to themselves. I’m sure all the toy-dog-toting celbutantes would hardly approve of this type of action. Yet they support PETA anyhow because it’s the trendy thing to do.
PETA has yet to show me that they are actually interested in the welfare of animals more than the notoriety of themselves. Furthermore, they have shown that they aren’t truly invested in equality or ethics when they treat women as pawns in their game of publicity. If PETA were interested in garnering membership based on true ownership of a cause, I doubt they’d be using women’s naked bodies to do so.
If PETA is right and humans are nothing more than animals, they are guilty of betraying their own mission each time they use women’s nude or sexualized images in this way. The use of women as an advertising space is wrong. The fact that they don’t get that is deplorable.
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Tags: advertisements > common ground > commonality of causes > Cut The Games Anti-Award > Ingrid Newkirk > male gaze > PETA > sexism > women's bodies
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January 28th, 2009 @ 12:08 pm
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February 5th, 2009 @ 2:51 am
They also talked some shit about Steve Irwin and it made me want to go buy a mink coat.