PETA, why must thou suck so much?

I guess the question is really: am I really surprised? PETA, possibly the lamest “activist” group in the activist world, has come through again with these super lame ads that don’t really have anything to do with animal rights, but a lot to do with women-as-sexual-vessels.

I have to say, though, that the Alicia Silverstone ad is lamer than the Dita Von Teese one…maybe because I sort of like/have a fascination with Dita Von Teese. She wrote a book that talks about the history of Burlesque and was married to Marilyn Manson, for God’s sake. Her ad is sort of kitchy and cute, too. Well–almost. Look, it’s better than the what-the-hell ad that pseudo-activist Alicia Silverstone is doing. Hey, I appreciate Alicia Silverstone stands for something, ANYTHING, really, which is sadly an anomally in the young hollywood circuit, but does she even know what she’s talking about? Does she know any of the issues? AT ALL? Her ad doesn’t make me really angry, actually, it’s just that the ad is so stupid, so it naturally annoys me to no end. Hearing her talk about vegetarianism in print interviews, she seems to match up well, I suppose, with PETA’s puppies-are-cute-so-don’t-eat-beef elementary school ideology, and apparently skipped the part in her life to bother reading/skimming the book jacket of Carol J. Adams’ The Sexual Politics of Meat.

Since becoming obsessed with reading about food activist issues, I’ve decided in recent times that most vegan/vegetarian lifestyles are counter-productive in helping the world (See my anti-vegan rant on my urban gardening blog. Or read the great Barbara Kingsolver, or read Jessica Prentice’s Blood Moon chapter in Full Moon Feast). But I WAS a vegetarian for quite some time before I made this decision, and, starting in high school, feminist issues were part of my vegetarian crusade. A lot had to do with factory farming, those oppressed animals being equated with oppressed women, and sexual politics. Things that PETA apparently has never thought about.

However, many people have heard me bitch about PETA and their idiocy, and these ads, right on the heels of their deplorable “milk gone wild” ads, are pretty characteristic. Micheal Pollen bitches about them, too. In Omnivore’s Dilemma he talks about how counter-active their protests are concerning the hunting of non-native boars for food in one region of California. Though the invasive boars are literally destroying the natural habitat for many native plants and animals, making it virtually impossible for them to survive, and though people are hunting these boars for food, they oppose the hunting, with no regard or thought for any sort of ecological systems in place.

PETA is like the dumb, sheltered trust fund kid born in affluent, white suburbia who has never left, except for occasional cruises to the Carribean or shopping trips in Italy. However, he/she still feels for something, although doesn’t really think about any deep-rooted issues AROUND that one thing, because, like, he/she’s never really thought THAT hard about it.

Oh, lord, I could go on for days. I just wish that an activist group that apparently has a lot of money and a prominent voice really did do good things, because they DO have the pull and the power. In fact, PETA2 was voted “favorite activist group” among Venus Zine’s readers not too long ago. I think this has much to do with celebrity-driven ads making them so high-profiled. I just wish that instead of just “be vegetarian”, they could at least mention supporting small-scale farms or growing your own food. Because supporting Phillip Morris’ Boca Burgers or Kellogg’s Morning Star Farms veggie corn dogs not only supports destroying woodland animals’ natural habitats with their enormous, corporate fields, but also supports the polluting of surrounding habitats for other animals, and killing many of them with the huge farm machinery of plows and tractors. Supporting them is supporting monsterous corporations, making their careless, money-driven actions virtually unstoppable.

See? Days, I say.