1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t31mrzY21sU: PETA commercial (and critique)
2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ibth4Jav-s: PETA man spoof
3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEqHOETejjU: Jessica Simpson ad


Sex has become such a generality and pervasive medium utilized by advertisers that I rarely am surprised when a new company “gets naked” to push a product. Yet PETA, for me, was a slight shock. Beginning with Pamela Anderson and her nudist “stand-ins”, in department store windows, declaring “I would rather be naked then wear fur” or “Give fur the cold shoulder”, PETA entered a new, and rather exposed stage in its war against meat. Whereas PETA is no stranger to nudity, it was a nudity of a different sort, the naturalist, hippy-dippy-trippy nudity of long-haired activists storming runway fashion shows and splashing red paint on overly-priced fur garments. And while this still occurs, PETA has adopted a highly air-brushed and overtly sexual veneer as of late, a nudity not purely for its confrontation properties but rather for its attractive, smoothed-out perfection, designed to entice, excite and perhaps convert one to the lifestyle of flesh-abstention (within regards to food that is) and animal loving, fuzzy-wuzzy benevolence. I am recalled to the Frankfurt School and Adorno and Holkheimer for one has to wonder; when vegetarianism as a lifestyle is now paraded and sold through the vehicle of highly sexualized, over-perfected images, it must be true as they asserted that “culture now impresses the same stamp on everything.” (406) This makes sense when contextualized among the meat-loving megagiants of the food industry who have also trod down the pseudo-pornographic path, merging images of scantily-clad suggestive females, beckoning “hungry” audiences to try their tempting tidbits. When Pizza Hut can convince Jessica Simpson, to tantalize every pimple-faced adolescent boy’s taste buds and, well…other regions… (OK penis I said it)…with blond hair blown by some phantom wind machine whilst she drops Pizza bits into their salivating mouths—(see video URL listed above) who can blame an organization hocking broccoli to show a little skin? Again reverting to Adorno and Holkheimer, this clearly displays that in its bid for survival, PETA is going mainstream, entering and embracing the Culture Industry with full force and open arms (and other appendages) and proving that “even the aesthetics activities of political opposites”—veggie lovers and their animal devouring antithesis—both prove to have “enthusiastic obedience to the rhythm of the iron system.” (406) And that system, ladies and gentlemen, is one run on Sex. As vegetarians remain relatively on the margins of mainstream dietary habits, and in light of the fact that inferior forms of culture have “always relied on [their] similarity with others”(412), PETA has thus shown its perceived need to conform to the hegemonic style of advertising of the social hierarchy which is revealed as being constructed principally on highly sexual imagery. Showcasing the 4 principles of the culture industry outlined by Professor Musial, PETA is now 1: homogenizing its images, (all vegetarians are sexy, nudist females) 2: showcasing a distinct standardization and predictability (all vegetarians are sexy, nudist females) 3: dealing with falsehoods (all vegetarians are sexy, nudist females) and 4: presenting a pseudoindividualization of Vegetarians (all vegetarians are sexy nudist females who hate ugly meat-lovers) These four principles are represented in perfect unison in PETA’s banned and damned 2009 Super Bowl commercial which offered up racy, soft-porn choreography featuring sexy, scantily-clad protein-protesting femme fatales, getting their proverbial “freak on” with pumpkins, zucchinis and cauliflowers. Evoking the spirit of Neo Marxism, one can perceive that an intensely false consciousness is being produced here, an idealized, erotically-charged world in which all vegetarians are perfect, tanned, toned and horny. In accordance with their desired infiltration of the world of Super Bowlers—occupied by chicken wings, beefy nachos and more succulent animal carnage than could ever be deemed decent—PETA has thus deployed its bevy of nutritionally conscious temptresses to undermine Jimmy Dean lovers across North America, declaring how “studies show that Vegetarians have better sex.” Well that had to put a damper in their barbeque-sauce-drowned flesh fest. Although many horror struck activists groups railed on PETA for its objectification of women (and rightly so), one has to wonder if this is the reason NBC finally pulled the commercial, or was it the disturbingly contradictory impulses driving Joe Normal to question his commitment to chicken products when faced with abstaining feminine goddesses promising eternal sexual gratification for those who abandon the meat-laden road to libidinal perdition in favor of the sexy vegetarian path less trodden? Pizza Hut, for one, had to be a little peeved, as vegetarian pizza’s make up but a fragment of their gross national sales. Beyond sales figures and the false presumptions that all vegetarians flourish in crystalline perfection (which disenfranchises an entire population of vegetarians who wish earnestly to save poor, helpless, animals yet can’t save themselves from cellulite), there is a collinear, pernicious and implicit suggestion which irks me to no end. Where, oh where are the sexy, writhing, vegetarian men? Granted, the most salient examples of male vegetarianism such as Moby may not fit the bill, yet who says all those females showing veggies a “good time” in the Super Bowl spot actually were vegetarians? Yet there is not even the slightest pretense of a single naked male veggie-lovin tree-hugger in any of PETA’s campaigns! Well, ever party has a pooper and that’s why I’ve invited Freud, for the man’s diagnosis of the human psyche although wholly phallocentric and incorrect on a few minor quibbles (sorry, but I have never had penis envy; don’t want one, never will) proves disturbingly accurate for our PETA fiasco. Obviously there is some odious psychological implication to selling vegetarianism to a mass audience, exclusively through the imagery of ravenous, over-sexed females. If men are not the only carnivores reeking havoc on animal sanctity, then the gaze of mass consumer culture must be assumed to be wholly inculcated and accustomed to viewing the world through testosterone-colored glasses. Here female sexuality is a generalized medium, a conduit catering especially to the gaze of men but also to females. As well, please see URL link #2 for a spoof of the PETA commercial performed by men to see how perfectly or, rather absurdly the substitution of female veggie “fluffers” actually is, thus proving that the gaze is one-directional and cannot not be inverted and subjected to a man, even when the subject matter is itself as absurd as vegetable eroticism. PETA has thus done to the human animal a deed it condemns others for doing to any other species of living creature; commodified, subjugated, abused (yes…I would judge that making women perform fellacio on a gourd is abuse) and peddled women and female sexuality, all in the name of “animal” rights.