Dear PETA, women are animals too...
Dear PETA,
What is it with the soft porny commercials and naked women? Are you truly so blinded by your desire to save furry critters with faces that you forget women are critters with faces too? Those women were even somewhat furry too, before you made them get all waxed and shaved so they could get nekkid for your tacky ad campaigns. (Apparently natural is good for sheep but not for girls.)
The women in your ads all too often appear to be the victims of some sort of strange fetishized sexualized violence. Naked, vulnerable, marked up like exotic animals, chained and caged. And yet, lovely. Thin, yet curvy. Beautiful, beaten and bound. Sometimes dead.
The gap between this and many a movie you can't see without mom and dad is skimpier than that piece of lettuce that you, PETA, think passes as clothes.
For a group that can work up a head of steam over a goldfish, you sure don't seem to get that women are people too. Seriously, the women of PETA (that sounds like a Playboy layout doesn't it?) are starved, shaved, waxed and laid out for someone's 'viewing pleasure' (surely not mine) like...what am I looking for...oh yeah, a piece of meat. Irony much?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is more of the same old PETA tripe. You have been exploiting naked women in what they say is an effort to stop the exploitation of animals for decades now. But someone sent me a link to this Alicia Silverstone video and asked me if I thought it would help animal rights.
Um, yeah, not so much.
First, the copy:
Sexy Hollywood star Alicia Silverstone bares all in PETA's first-ever naked veggie testimonial PSA. Watch Alicia's sexy video, directed by acclaimed director Dave Meyers, whose credits include videos for Britney Spears, OutKast, and Dave Mathews Band.
Very good! You got 'sexy' in both sentences! (and the headline, but who's counting?) Just in case the 'could be raped and left for dead' pseudo-glam shot of Alicia Silverstone that tops this page wasn't 'sexy enough' for your visitors to get. (I do so like the homage to the abused woman motif that that the fashion industry also loves so much. Abused animal=bad, abused woman=marketing. Sweet.)
I have to ask about this: "...PETA's first-ever naked veggie testimonial PSA" though. If this is the first, what, then, are all of these:
Traci Bingham: naked and marked up like an old feminist poster - this makes my brain melt
Imoben Bailey: naked, not to mention shacked, lonely and beaten (your terms, not mine)
Doninique Swain (of Lolita 'fame') is naked in a schoolroom and you helpfully point out that she's your youngest naked celebrity. (not that you want to make people think of naked schoolgirls or anything but did you mention Lolita and that she the youngest...?)
Lamon Brewster: male, thus fully clothed (bonus message: hitting people is cool! "I usually let my fists do the talking for me...")
In fairness, I did find those two naked men, and dozens more naked women, although neither of them are portrayed lying around looking all come hither. I see muscles and action and being an active agent in their own realities. Not so much with the languishing on the grass naked as if they are too weakened to get up and grab either clothes or food.
And let's not forget the udderly disgusting Milk Gone Wild or the Lettuce Ladies, another campaign I could leaf alone. (yes, I will pay the pun tax.) Note that the Broccoli Boys have their very own tank tops, although there is the one shirtless guy with the sausages around his neck. Not gonna go there.
PETA, even when you let women keep their clothes on, you still sorta treat them like animals. No wait, worse than animals. After all, according to you, animals are people too - but women apparently are not. So we are treated to joyous imagery such as:
- A woman in fur coat coughing up a hairball.
- A woman on all fours drinking water from the toilet in her upscale apartment.
- A fur-clad woman using the cat's litterbox. (I can't bring myself to go find those links, too much of your site makes my brain hurt)
- A man clubs a woman to death and then rips her fur coat off her body. (because what, meat is murder but killing women for their clothes is just plain old fun?)
And then there are the live protests. Like this triptych of naked women in coffins pretending to be dead. Or the naked woman on a BBQ grill - I believe those are sear marks. WTF?
Too subtle? Think the audience might not be getting the point? Try this.
As far as I can see, dear PETA, you are just another business that learned that sex sells and images of sexualized violence sell even better. Because tits and ass for a 'cause' is such a huge improvement over tits and ass for profit. Yeah, whatever.
I remain in search of a sane animal rights organization.
No love.
~kitchenMage
