Wait a minute before you continue reading did you read my title? Let’s read that again but slowly.
Admit. It. You’d. Rather. Eat. Your. Wife. Not. A. Burger. Oh wait.. what’s the difference?
I’ve already told you about when I was a vegetarian now let me tell you WHY I turned into one. In 6th grade I was introduced to a video of how McDonalds chicken nuggets were made.. now at the time? We had just had baby chickens at our school the week before. They killed little baby chickens in the video, the week before I was playing with them. It’s so sad that the same baby chickens I played with were going to be used to either be forced to get plump and die for human foods, OR they are forced to lay eggs. I learned that baby chickens are forced to eat food an they put chemicals in their food that make the chickens grow bigger and faster. The conditions that the chickens live in I wouldn’t want my own dogs to go through that. How can dog be mans best friend and we allow ourselves to eat chickens.
We were told to choose three images and explain what we learned and all that good stuff, I’m gunna switch it up I’ll allow you to understand what I’ve learned but I will also include my own opinion on these photos. I suggest you stop reading now if you’re a man because you will probably most likely feel attacked I don’t mean to do so it’s just how society was built. Fight the government if you have to(PS MAKE SURE YOU VOTE!)
In an interview with Carol Adams we learn from an early childhood she realizes that ‘critters’ in her terms were her friends and she loves them. Due to the death of her pony she converts into a vegetarian she states:
“Why am I eating a dead cow when I wouldn’t eat my dead pony?”(Adams,12)
In the pictures placed above I chose these three images because they share the same message. In the first picture you can identify a pig dressed and snapped as a woman with words above her that say “Best butts in Georgia” and to the right of it there is a menu. In the interview with Adams during a question she tells us during “the sexual politics of meat slideshow” she now gives out a handout with nine feminist vegan posts and one is:
“6) Women are animalized and animals are sexualized and feminized.”(Adams, 13)
Now with learning that looking at the pig image it’s not just an image it’s abuse of an animal. It’s also highly disrespectful that they would draw the pig in the image of woman allowing viewers ESPECIALLY MEN because clearly the sex appeal is for men, and after my last post you learned that meat is usually a male food. Meaty cheeseburgers are a male food item, while little pathetic salads are for women. The next image shows a rack of ribs and two women with healthy chests with the caption “Best racks”.. where was the joke? You just sexualized a woman and compared her to a rack of ribs, her breasts are what? Edible? Shoot just throw your wife in the oven at that point when you use comments like that. We finish off with our last image “eat me” along with a burger. Now we could’ve stopped right their but of course to pull in customers and it’s CLEAR AS DAY that they were pulling in men customers they added some legs with netted stockings and red high heals. Now to me that could be used as an advertisement for pimps to gather more prostitutes but hey that’s just me. It’s actually really sick, and also a prominent issue that society has. Everything is to please the man. Food is for men, women are for men, men deserve the world at this point. Excuse my french but lets just say fuck the animals, fuck the women, fuck everything as long as the ‘man’ is happy fed and full everything is okay. ITS NOT. Sexualizing foods allows men to feel as if they have the upper hand. We are taught as children repetition is key, and consistency and how you present yourself. Our society from the beginning of time has had the same thing of all three but for men. Images like this give men the okay to treat women like they are a piece of meat, advertisements like this give men the okay to rape. I asked a random male from one of my classes how do you feel about women after looking at these three images.. he laughed at me and I quote he said:
“If advertisements don’t even respect women.. what makes you think I will?”
That’s where I’ll leave it.. xoxo gossip girl & a VERY irritated and opinionated small girl with BIG opinions.
Hey Melany, first of all I have to say that I enjoyed reading your blog and could see how passionate you are about this topic.While I myself am not a vegetarian or vegan I do not condone the ways in which our source of life is being treated in order to mass-produce. And as I read Adams interview I became aware of just how desensitized our society has become to this form of violence. Adams argues that by feminizing/ sexualizing animals and animalizing women advertisements, “are working to maintain important aspects of consumer culture, to reinforce privilege…and to maintain the important fiction of essential differences between men and women and humans and nonhumans” (Adams 15). Thus, we no longer associate nonhuman animals as the living beings that they are nor grant them the proper respect. Within your last paragraph you mention that when asking a male classmate how these images made him feel the response seemed so simple to him, as though the advertisements appeared on their own without a creature. By redirecting the blame from himself or our society and placing it all on the advertisement itself, your classmate was simply pointing right back as his privilege. The author describes privilege as invisible, because it exist not to be examined. This privilege also finds its way through to our art forms which shows, “the act of killing animals…is an act of self-definition as a privileged (male-identified) human, and it allows all other humans the access to that self-definition, too, as voyeurs and consumers” (Adams 17). I was wondering what your thoughts on using the carcasses of animals for art where? Also I wonder if the response your classmate had to these images are not a result of how normal they have become to our society (as objects that go unnoticed), rather they are viewed as funny due to how sexist and dehumanizing they truly are?
Hey Melany! I really liked reading your post. I used to get really angry about this sort of stuff too, and unfortunately I’ve kind of just gotten desensitized to most of this stuff over the years. It used to really irk me how this kind of stuff gets overlooked the majority of the time. Especially with the picture captioned “we’ve got the best racks”. It makes me wonder when this ad was even created! It seems so dated and is something we should have all moved past in society. Maybe if I had seen a lot of male equivalents for these same sort of adverts and signs I would look the other way and not think too hard about this.
I don’t know. After I while I got used to seeing things like this all over the place and rather than get uncomfortable or mad, I just grew to ignore it. It really sucks to say but I personally think that these sort of ads and comparisons are here to stay. Or at least, they’re going to stick around for a long time. Even know, i kind of just glaze my eyes over these images and try not to think too hard about the bigger ramifications they’ll have. They’ve become so ingrained and normalized that even now I feel more “meh” about them than anything else. I’m glad that you’ve remained outspoken about this sort of stuff, though. Hopefully you won’t grow bitter and tired like I have!
I have to say that your blog has been much more aggressive than others I have been reading. To start, I like your title, I find it a good way to introduce this topic. You make some fair points about how we decide to love one thing and eat another, but there are places that eat dog. That we would not eat a dog or a pony, because it is just not a common occurrence in this society. Though it is fair to say we should not eat animals, in the regards of the readings, we should not even keep them as pets. Which is also fair to say, who are we to take a dog in the home and contain. In other places of the world, dogs are not animals let into the house, they are pets, but they are free. Going more into the advertising, I would say men are a victim to this as well. Who makes the advertisements, it is people making them, not just men, but women too. It is sad how they sexualize animals, but sex sells. insecure men are targets of these ads, making them associate the food the seller wants to sell with sex. Almost making them think eating this food is as good as sex or will get you sex. I feel it is not intent on dehumanizing women and feminizing animals, but is a cruel consequence of trying to use a trick to get mens attention. Also, you call a salad pathetic, but again it is being called that, because thats what you decided it was. I am not big on salad specifically, but I have become big on plant based foods. I still love my meat, but i recognize it does not make me more of a man, or that it is perfectly ok. I know being a vegan is not only better for animals, but also for the planet making more space for human plant food. When I do eat meat, I try to get it from fair treatment places, or locally sourced like at a farmers market. I feel what it comes down to is respect. Like your friend said “if advertisements dont respect women…what makes you think I will?” which I am curious what is said between that first and last statement, but besides that, the quote is comical. To say that quote excluding the missing segment, is to say that your values stem from advertisers. That is like saying I only give money to animal shelters because they told me I should. I am not sure how best to put it, but essentially it is implying your values come from ads themselves. Which sadly many are victim to. women through ads are told they are suppose to look a certain way and men are told they are suppose to eat a certain way. so who is at fault the advertisers or the people listening? I would say both, excluding children, because they dont know better at that point in there life. Personally, I would say your friend has his values wrong, or wants to disrespect women and found an excuse to do so. And yes these ads are an issue, so are ads targeted at women saying you should act this way. I would say both groups are targeted at in the areas that the advertisers can admitaly target to. I would say men have been dominating for a long time, but the solution is not to blame men. Like you said we were taught repetition and consistency is key and having these ads shoved down our throat obviously has an impact. As well as how we present ourselves, which is not only done by the individual, but also through the society. Clearly we have allowed our society to go down a path that lets things that should be respected desensitized to our perceptions. That not only are men to blame, but that we are all to blame. Some are more to blame than others, but the ignorant just do not know. That is what being ignorant is, it is the lack of knowing something. I think how we fix this societal is by not screaming and fighting other, but by approaching people with the respect that you feel you deserve and having a discussion. It is a pain in the ass to do it, but when you talk to the individual, usually you see each other as people. I forget who said it, but it is hard to win an argument against someone intelligent, but it is damn near impossible to win an argument with an idiot. So in this case, we can not make it an argument, because it will just dig people deeper into their trench. We make it discussion and approach people with respect, and if they cant respect us, then there is always plan B. (Plan B: dress anyone up who lacks respect as a tree and then chop them down.)