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Following my post about “vegangelical…”

Following my post about “vegangelical…” published on 2 Comments on Following my post about “vegangelical…”

…Here are some observations from Feministing about the objectification of women to promote meatless eating.

As Feministing points out, using objectified women to sell meat is nothing new. [Here’s one of my favorite examples, a Carl’s Jr. commercial starring Paris Hilton, a hose, a car, a bucket of suds and a hamburger.] But apparently animal-rights activists, vegetarian organizations and vegan organizations exploit the same tropes as well. For example, here’s a commercial from the super-nutball, super-sexist PETA in which Alicia Silverstone comes out of a pool, naked, in slow motion. Somehow, this sells vegetarianism. In a press release about Eva Mendes posing naked for their “Fur? I’d rather go naked!” campaign, PETA, unsurprisingly enough, calls Mendes “one of Hollywood’s sexiest leading ladies,” “a regular red-carpet knock-out” and, just for some useless “hot-blooded Hispanic” stereotyping, a “sexy Latina.” The print text makes it clear that Mendes does not appear as someone you should pay attention to because she decided to abjure fur out of compassion or humanism or rational decision-making. You should pay attention to her because she’s glamorous and attractive, and she doesn’t wear fur, and do you YOU want to be just as glamorous and attractive as she is? PETA, while supplying my two examples, ain’t the only offender of such sexist, objectifying bullshit. See the Feministing entry for details about a vegan strip club [???!!] and the group Vegan Vixens [????!!!!].

Ann Friedman, post author, sums up the screwiness: “[U]sing the “ideal” female body type — something men want and women want to be — as an incentive to go vegan…is deeply fucked up, especially because there are dozens of real, compelling reasons to switch to a vegan lifestyle — none of them based on sexist bullshit.” 

P.S.: Here’s a super special bonus article from Salon, analyzing the misogynist, objectifying tactics of the popular Skinny Bitch “secret vegan ambush” cookbook.

2 Comments

Every time I think of Alicia Silverstone, I think of this Onion article – http://www.theonion.com/content/node/30356

The fact of the matter is, most people (men and women) I have met who are vegan fall into one of two camps:
1. Folks who are truly concerned about the earth and their impact on it as well as their own physical well-being. These are the folks who ask to have their choices respected (meaning “please let me bring a dish to your dinner party that I know I can eat”, or “please keep the nutritional label handy for munchies at your party so I can check for myself to see if this is something I can eat – since I am the one responsible for what I put into my body” or “Can we agree to do lunch at Restaurant X, which has something for both of us?”) and that I see making honest efforts to honor not only vegan principles, but to take good care of themselves physically. Generally, these are the folks who won’t get into my face about it (most of the time) and are willing to admit that in order to cross over into a vegan diet takes a commitment of time and effort.
2. Folks who are becoming vegan because it is “trendy”. These are usually the folks who are not being very mindful about what goes into OR what comes out of their months. If there is anything I can’t stand is being lectured on how I am an earth-killer because I ate a turkey sandwich for lunch by someone who subsists mainly on junk food.

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