Vegan organisation and animal rights group, PETA has long been accused of using women negatively in advertising to promote their cause. So much so that people often jokingly change their slogan to Unethically Using Women for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
Now while I love kittens and bunnies just as much as the next chick, I happen to respect women more. Go figure. PETA, on the other hand, and rather weirdly I might add, seems to hate women.
I know that the naked female form is a commodity, and that it is used by just about everyone to sell products and ideas. And I appreciated the irony in portraying a naked woman as nothing more than a selection of prime cuts. In fact, I saw that particular ad as a feminist statement that highlighted how women are so often treated as meat. And besides, it had a chilling Michel Faber Under the skin type of quality to it that I found to be both powerful and disturbing.
But for God’s sake, PETA. Why build your ENTIRE advertising campaign around dehumanising women?
If they’re not busy fat-shaming overweight women with Save the Whale posters, they’re criticising our genitalia, or using the female form in such a sleazy way that it would make a second-hand car salesman from the 80s blush.
Of course we’re used to misogyny in the media, but why does PETA seem so intent to piss women off? There are lots of female vegans dudes; in fact, demographics show that women make up two thirds of your numbers. So what’s with the hate?
Their latest ad, the one that finally jolted me into adding my dulcet tones to the angry choir, shows a bruised woman in a neck brace, walking wide-legged and with difficulty to buy celery for her boyfriend. Wearing only her panties, because you know that's how women shop in winter. The mocking, faux-sympathetic male voiceover explains that she suffers from the made-up condition BWVAKTBOOM which stands for “Boyfriend Went Vegan and Knocked the Bottom out of Me.”
Nice.
Now while I’m not saying this ad promotes rape – the sex seems consensual, if painfully rough – I am saying that I am pretty uncomfortable with an organisation that portrays all women as willing victims who would come back for more abuse, despite being in agony, if their boyfriends suddenly turned into sex fiends.
And call me conservative but I don’t think people should joke about women being fucked so hard that they end up in neck braces and walk with difficulty because of genital or anal trauma.
Why not? Well ask yourself: How many women do you know who like their sex so rough that they’d happily end up in such a state? Now ask yourself: How many women end up like this, day after day after day as a result of rape and abuse?
You do the math.
Follow Lili on Twitter.