…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.