PETA or People for Ethical Treatment of Animals is an organization that is built on very good intentions to encourage vegetarianism/veganism and anti-animal cruelty, but they seemed to go about it in such a way that is not helping their cause, but rather, causing some (including myself) to be disillusioned by the movement. While I am not discrediting their efforts for neglected and abused pets or furthering exposure of the poor conditions and callous treatment of animals within the meat market, they seem to have strayed from their intended purpose of inspiring others and reaching out to them to help these creatures, by reducing themselves to utilize lowbrow methods of attracting recruits that turns others away. As you can see, many of their ads and public rallies include people parading around in close to nothing, and while I condone radical protest for a good cause, the way to go about it is not undermining people to be easily manipulated by sexuality. Although I believe that sexuality is something that should be embraced, it certainly should not be used as it was in the PETA ad that was to be aired during the Superbowl this year but was pulled for its overt adult content. It featured scantily clad vixens crawling towards and licking a pumpkin, rubbing vegetables on their body (even suggesting masturbation with asparagus or broccoli, intercourse with a gourd, etc.), and even took it to the point of blatant self-petting on the breast while one of them was about to eat a veggie. The Superbowl is a testosterone-laden event so the provocative material must have been aimed to this audience, but it is also family-oriented since it aired on NBC, available in an estimated 112 million households and I am sure that many of them are in suburbs, where it can be witnessed by sensitive viewers.
It is offensive to me that they would condone the belittlement of sexuality to nothing more than a ploy to get endorsements and it is highly tired out that they would
use these images to manipulate people who they seemed to have undermined as being mindless perverts. Whether the greater population is just that is up to speculation, however it is not hard to argue that PETA has lost sight of their cause. It seems that the "Vegetarians have better sex" ad stems from a study that they are concocting that connects vegetarianism to virility, but it stands that you cannot quantify the quality of sex. Also, diet can be responsible for lower sex drive, but carnivores, omnivores, and herbivores alike can have theirs negatively affected by their nutrition, no matter who they are. But vegetarian diets tend to correlate with higher rates of zinc deficiency, which may lead to lower testosterone levels and sex drive.
So what is PETA's justification for their ad? Well, they claimed that eating meat can lead to cardiovascular disease and obesity, but these ailments are not reserved just for the meat-eater. Also, in the September Issue of Obstetrics & Gynecology, it was recognized that a woman's ability to have an active sex life is not influenced by weight based on data from a 2002 National Survey of Family Growth that looked at the sexual behavior of more than 7,000 women. Dr. Bliss Kaneshiro, who was a student at the time of the study at Oregon Health & Science University (now an assistant professor at the School of Medicine at the University at of Hawaii), with the help of Oregon State professor Marie Harvey's expertise, conducted this study and realized that their research contradicted with the commonly held stereotype that weight affected sexual behavior. Kaneshiro said the data showed that overweight women were more likely to report having sexual intercourse with a man, even when she was controlled for age, race, and type of residence. 92% of overweight women reported having a history of sexual intercourse with a man, as opposed to 87% with a normal BMI (body mass index). Therefore, in Kaneshiro's on words, their analysis "demonstrated that obese and overweight women do not differ significantly in some of the objective measures of sexual behavior compared to women of normal weight."
Furthermore, PETA had decided to continue their "sexy" trend with their "Girl-on-Girl Make-out Tour". I am not sure how this has anything to do with animal rights and while it may raise some eyebrows, it seems that they will unblushingly continue this exploitative tour, which is basically two girls dressed in bikinis, lip-locking on a mattress on a city corner. While some may assert that this furthers the LGBT interest for being so open about it, it makes it difficult for an outsider to be particularly sensitive and serious about either cause. Especially since the two girls were probably paid to kiss each other. It is absolutely shameful how atrociously bad PETA is at treating women's issues by objectifying women and their sexuality, and creating ads portraying idealized and unrealistic women. And apparently, according to the top most picture, if you don't shave, you're not socially acceptable, because your bikini line is everybody's business now.
Stop dragging down the gays, the women, and the good vegetarians down with you, PETA!
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My Conclusions:
- A lot of celebrities endorse PETA, including Missy Higgins and Dita von Teese, two people that I love. But also, they have porn stars in their ads. Which means nearly pornographic ads. Ugh.
- I was mind-blown when I saw that PETA protested Tila Tequila for not including animals on her show and not for making the contestants eat miscellaneous animal parts, like "a pig's vagina!!" God, I don't like her. She's not really bi either. They wrote ways around her ending up with a girl on her show and she believes that girls are with girls because they're tired of guys. Lame.
- I'm going to refer to the time Lindsay was bombed with flour and agree with Samantha Ronson who said that that flour could have fed a family and they wasted it. Also, when they ruin those coats, that doesn't undo the fact that those animals died for that coat. It just makes those animals death which already happened, in vain.
- Some of the places I got my info: newfeministmom.blogspot.com, physorg.com, afterellen.com, and other places. So don't kill me, I didn't plagiarize!
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