Social Causes: PETA and women - this is the long post

The ever critical internet, and probably an academic study or two, yields no shortage of criticisms aimed at PETA. Take a look at their media center and you can probably see (if not understand) that much of this criticism surrounds PETA's use of women.

Before getting into this, though, it'll be useful to discuss advertising in general. Particularly studies about nudity and advertising. Research on nudity and brand recall has shown that nudity is great for grabbing attention, but may adversely affect brand recall. One theory is that consumers see the ad and pay little attention to the brand.

What makes PETA an interesting case to look at is that it isn't exactly selling a product or service. It's selling a social cause, and is arguably the most well known animal rights group in America. As a result, they don't quite have a need for brand recall. What they do need, however, is attention. The same studies that assert that nudity interferes with brand recall admit that nudity attracts a viewer's interest. (Note that in the study I'm specifically referring to, they found this to be the case with female nudes. They did not test with male nudes. )

It is this quality, I think, that makes PETA worth looking at. Their need for attention necessitates that they be particularly savvy in knowing what appeals to consumers. This more than anything (except maybe underwear and lingerie ads, which I'll cover in another post) exposes what it means to be a nude body in public.

Take this ad for example:




Like all of the other media containing female nudes on PETA's site, in this one being nude means being thin and curvy (potentially involving digital manipulation), feminine, young (nudity and age is on my list of posts to do), having flawless skin and white (even if she's not). It means having muscles that are toned but big enough to give the impression of strength. It also means not engaging the camera or the audience, but allowing them to consume you.

This image, on the other hand, is the antithesis of a PETA advertisement, as it depicts a real female. One with weight and skin flaws just like everyone else.

Why does PETA think that we'd rather see someone so flawless? Is it because we would really rather see her? Of course. But why? What is it about age, weight, masculinity or color that makes advertisers erase them to to try to appeal to us?

I think that this campaign, whether it means to or not, especially exposes the confusion surrounding nudity. "I'd rather go naked than wear fur" suggests some sort of dilemma. It appears as though the models are given the two equally undesirable choices of going nude or wearing fur. Obviously they choose fur, but none of the models seem uncomfortable with it. In fact, they all seem rather happy to be nude. This construction captures the tension between cultural and moral sanctions against public nudity (and sometimes even private nudity) and it's increasing use in most media. This post is long enough, and I'm still developing this point, so I'll most likely post in this later.

(Photo modeled by Amber Smith)

(also, this was cross-posted on Newsvine.)

You're such an ass

Shakesville (apparently my favorite blog!) has a great series of posts, called Today in Disembodied Things, chronicling media and products that excise not only the identities of women (and perhaps men, I'm not sure) from their bodies, but also cut away other, what I presume advertisers think are unnecessary, parts of their bodies.

As you can imagine the parts left over are most often what, if you believe the media, are the most coveted parts of women: legs, breasts, butts, etc.

Something like this (note, I'm unsure of when this ad was made. It's not new, but still relevant. It's just something I found.):

Beyond treating women as accessories (though they do), with these ads advertisers make statements about what women are. Perhaps not surprisingly, many of them would like for women to just be a set of breasts (preferably young) or long legs.

What's worse, this meme changes little whether the models have clothes or not. One of the consequences of presenting models in this way is the stripping of their agency. Does it matter whether or not a woman has clothes on if she's just a pair of breasts?

I redid this advertisement using myself as a model, wondering how it would change the image.


Despite being disembodied, I don't think that the image of myself could be perceived as attempting to attract a gaze or objectify me. I don't even feel that the image reduces me to a body part. I'm not sure if this is because I took the picture or because I'm a male in the image, or something else.
But I'm just a guy wearing jeans.

The woman in the original ad, on the other hand, is intentionally sensual. Her nudity is underscored by the pattern on her butt (where it would be if she actually were wearing Levi's), drawing attention this sensuality.

But it's not anything she does, nor even the very fact that she's a woman that is supposed to make her sensual. It is the passiveness, the inability for her to act (in addition to her thinness, whiteness, and shape) that are supposed to do that.

I can't help but wonder how domestic violence, and especially rape, are influenced by images such as these. I'll save a deeper analysis for another post, but I would assume that this image, of women as accessories, as passive, as nothing but body parts for male consumption contributes to a culture in which rape is both pervasive and often seen as the fault of the victim.