Vegan Love and the Word Made Flesh

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is the most well known animal rights organization today. Playing no small role in PETA’s fame is its frequent use of spectacle, which tends to confront viewers with animal abuse or titillate them with scantily clad women. The photograph above, from their Valentine’s Day “Fur out—Love In” tour in the Midwest, is clearly an attempt at the latter. Viewers are likely to first notice the banner that proclaims “Vegans Make Better Lovers” and the two “lovers” (models really) wearing only lingerie while kissing. The coats worn by the woman and teenage girl, who hold the banner behind them, provide a clue as to the current chilly temperature (indeed, the “lovers” are also wearing gloves).

For anyone familiar with the “rule of three,” whereby you repeat a message three times to ensure that it is processed by the recipient, the attempt to correlate a vegan diet with better lovemaking may be seen as a success. This image, however, belies a fundamental flaw in PETA’s attempt to make their rhetoric "sexy." Although this is part of their “Fur out—Love In” tour, nowhere in this photograph is any mention made against wearing fur. The likelihood that one might intuit an anti-fur message from gazing on nearly naked models is rather slim. In their attempt to make animal rights "sexy," PETA has lost sight of the nonhuman animal. Perhaps the banner women are frowning because they notice this.

It may be worth considering Lady Gaga's outfit at the 2010 MTV Music Video Awards. While her decision to wear animal flesh was not to protest animal abuse, I think that it provides a useful contrast to PETA's attempts to make animal rights "sexy." Granted, sex appeal is still an important part to Lady Gaga's meat dress. Nonetheless, her outfit manages to confront the viewer with the raw flesh of nonhuman animals. In a largely ambivalent blog entry on Gaga's dress, Ingrid Newkirk (co-founder and president of PETA) noted, "The stunt is bringing lots of people to PETA.org to download a copy of our vegitarian/vegan starter kit, so I guess we should be glad" (PETA Files, 9/13/10). Whether PETA will begin imitating such apparel is unlikely. PETA should be mindful, however, not to lose sight of the nonhuman animal while trying to make animal rights "sexy."

Photos from: Peta.org; Dailystab.com