LIVE NUDE ACTIVISTS!!!

Sexy Strategies for Beating the Meat (Industry)

A PETA protester attracts attention to
KFC's inhumane treatment of chickens
by dressing down in winter weather

Perhaps you’ve seen them on the streets. Bikini-clad hotties handing veggie burgers out to passerby. Circus protesters in cramped cages body-painted orange-and-black like crouching tigers. Naked cellophane-wrapped demonstrators swathed in fake blood playing dead as cuts of meat in giant Styrofoam packaging. The people performing such provocative public displays can be identified, by their very lack of clothing, as a relatively new breed of animal advocate: one that uses varying shades of nudity to save other species from suffering and death.

Of course, the nude protest itself is not a recent invention. Legend has it that nearly a millennium ago, Lady Godiva rode a horse—au natural—through the streets of Coventry, England to successfully protest an oppressive tax issued by her husband, the Earl of Mercia. Yet, despite the passage of centuries, public displays of undress still arouse passionate arguments both for and against their ethicality and propriety.

The most conspicuous contemporary champion of nude protest is probably People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). I recently spoke with the Manager of PETA’s Campaigns Division, Lindsay Rajt, about this contentious but seductive subject.

Lindsay Rajt, Manager of PETA's
Campaigs Division, dons a lettuce bikini

AR: Why does PETA use nudity as an advocacy tactic?

LR: It’s a utilitarian decision. For all of PETA’s buzz and brand recognition, we’re a non-profit organization that goes up against extremely wealthy industries that invest vast amounts of money in advertising and public relations. On our comparatively tiny budget, we have to rely on getting free publicity through media coverage of our campaigns and demonstrations, and doing audacious and controversial things achieves that aim.

How nude do PETA activists actually get?

It depends on where the demonstration is being held, because each city has its own ordinances describing, often in explicit detail, what body parts you can and cannot legally expose, and we’re careful to comply with local laws. While we can get away with thongs and pasties in most places, some do allow women to go topless. There’s also this new product we’ve just started using called a shibue that’s basically a thong without straps: it just sort of adheres to the skin. Topless with a shibue is probably about as naked as we’re going to get in public. Regarding media campaigns, our “nudest” one is our online “State of the Union Undress” video, in which a female model does a strip-tease act that culminates in full frontal nudity.

How do you measure the effectiveness of nude protests and campaigns?

Our top priority is reaching as many people as possible. For street demos, that probably amounts to several hundred people in the course of an hour, and thousands more if the event is covered by the media. We systematically analyze which demos get the most attention in the full spectrum of print and broadcast media, and how our message is conveyed. With online initiatives, we’re able to track how many people watched a video or clicked a page and whether they stayed to explore other parts of our site. What we’ve found is that people really do stick around after the eye-catching video just as people on the street will linger and have a conversation once they’ve come over to check out our colorful protests.

When did PETA first start doing nude activism?

PETA was founded in 1980, but we only did our first “naked” campaign in 1989 when we produced a benefit poster with the Go-Go’s that they sold at concerts. It was a photo of the band members standing nude behind a banner reading “We’d rather go naked than wear fur.” These sold so well that we thought, “We really need to do more of this,” and organized our first naked demo in 1991. It was at an Oscar de la Renta fashion show, and included a mostly-nude man and woman handcuffed to a “We’d rather go naked than wear fur” banner strung across the runway. When The New York Times published a photo of the protest on their front page, we knew we’d found a powerful way to make headlines for animals.

Two decades later, does nudity still have the same kind of impact in today’s oversaturated multimedia marketplace?

PETA activists protest fur at Toronto Fashion Week, 2010

Considering the vast amounts of information and stimulation thrown at us every day, nudity is still an effective way to break through the noise. While nude demos and campaigns might not be front-page news anymore, the mainstream press still regularly reports on them. But the most exciting development nowadays for these types of actions is that they can go viral. I can see though how nudity might someday become less captivating as it becomes more culturally acceptable. I think that a lot of nudity’s power is derived from its “forbidden” status, and that’s going to diminish with its increasing normalization. Also, nudity tactics seem to be catching on in different social change movements, so overexposure may dilute their efficacy, as well.

Do nude demos and campaigns effectively influence people’s attitudes about animals?

Actor/comedian David Cross shows his
“funny bone” in a humorous PETA ad

Yes, because nudity is a fun way for many people to engage about difficult subjects. Showing people a photo of an animal who’s been skinned alive for her fur scares and saddens them, and most people don’t want to deal with the emotions that conjures up. But if you put, say, a man and woman in their underwear lying in bed together on the street underneath a poster that says “Fur Out, Love In,” then people are attracted rather than repelled by your message. By the way, that’s a real demo we did around Valentine’s Day this year, inspired by John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s 1969 “Bed-In” against the Vietnam War.

The John-and-Yoko connection is interesting because they were friends with Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman at that time, and many of PETA’s tactics seem to bear the Yippies’ distinctive “street theater” influence.

Like the Yippies, PETA recognizes the power of engaging people with humor. Nudity and comedy are a potent combination because while nudity has an initial attention-grabbing advantage, amusement can sustain that attention. Plus, people feel more comfortable approaching and talking with activists when they can share in the joke.

PETA also uses nudity to shock people into awareness, as in the “meat tray” demos. What’s the typical reaction to such “horror” protests?

One of PETA's macabre “meat tray” demos

While some people might be affected by our humorous demos, others might need to see pictures of how animals suffer on fur farms or in slaughterhouses or one of our “darker” protests before they are compelled to help animals. PETA’s “meat tray” demos and others like that really impact people on a visceral level. For instance, in one of our demos, an activist lays naked on a giant barbeque grill with char marks on her body, while a “butcher” in a fake-blood-spattered apron stands nearby sharpening a large plastic prop knife looking very cross. This makes people’s jaws drop because it’s often the first time they’ve consciously considered their connection with animals who they eat.

Does PETA also use nudity to show people that vegans are fit, healthy and sexy?

Owain Yeoman, co-star of The Mentalist,
 strikes a pose for PETA's veg campaign

Yes, especially because people really want to achieve their optimal weight and be attractive, and we’re always eager to prove, by “modeling” the results of a plant-based diet, that being vegan will help them do that. Plus, going vegan will likely lower your cholesterol and blood pressure while reducing your chances of suffering heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and various cancers. We even have a sexual health campaign called “Vegans Make Better Lovers” emphasizing that cholesterol and animal fat slow the flow of blood to all the body’s vital organs—not just the heart.

PETA persuades many celebrities to strip, mostly for media campaigns. How much does celebrity involvement enhance the message’s impact?

People who admire particular celebrities want to learn everything about them, and when famous people speak out about a cause, their fans listen. So many people have told me over the years, “I went vegetarian because I heard that so-and-so is veg.”

Switching gears, how do you respond to charges that PETA’s use of nudity for animal advocacy exploits women?

PETA appropriates the misogynistic image made iconic
by the cover of Carol J. Adams' landmark feminist
critique of carnivorism, The Sexual Politics of Meat

Using one’s own body of one’s own free will as an instrument for social and political change is freedom of speech and expression. Speaking as a woman and a feminist, I think it’s sexist to tell women they need to put their clothes back on. I’ve passed out veggie dogs in a lettuce bikini, been painted like a tiger and put in a cage, and stood naked on a bridge painted like a snake. Rather than making me feel exploited, these experiences were among the most personally empowering, liberating and transformative of my life. They gave me a new perspective on the hang-ups that almost all women have about their physical appearance. Exposing my body to make a statement about something important made me realize, for instance, just how silly it was to worry about whether my butt looked big in those tiger stripes. PETA also features just as many men in our nude protests and campaigns as women.

Critics might counter that men still have power over women in most societies, and objectifying females therefore perpetuates sexual victimization of women and girls.

I know from personal experience that such concerns are well-intentioned. I used to volunteer at a battered women’s shelter and have family members who’ve been in domestic violence situations, so I take this issue very seriously. So does PETA, and we would never do anything that we thought could degrade or endanger women or girls.

What about those who say nude protests are simply lewd?

In this day and age, that just seems prudish. I mean, go to any beach and you’ll see people revealing more skin than most PETA activists. These types of criticisms just take different forms in different time periods, whether they’re directed at PETA or society at large. Only a few decades ago, women were told it was disgraceful to show their knees in public or wear their hair down to their shoulders because it was too suggestive. Priggish complaints about nude social justice campaigns will soon seem just as laughable as admonitions about bare knees and flowing hairstyles do today.

Related AnimalRightings:

- Pranking the Monkey: What The Yes Men can teach animal activists

- Too Sexy For Your Meat: One man's view on the politics of vegan sexuality

Environmentalists, Fashion Designers Re-brand Fur as “Guilt-Free”

The hypocrisy of protecting wetlands by promoting clothes made from invasive “swamp-rats”

In the late 1800s, some Louisiana fur farmers started bringing cat-sized brown rodents called nutria over from Argentina to be bred, killed and skinned for posh women’s clothing. Of course, some eventually escaped their cages and found freedom in the wild, where they exponentially procreated and devoured the roots of plants that keep coastal marshes from disintegrating into open water. Now, decades later, there are about 20 million of these semi-aquatic, web-footed, rat-tailed, buck-toothed, beaveresque mammals inhabiting the state shredding thousands of acres of wetlands.*

But who ultimately gets blamed for this unnatural disaster? Certainly not the fur industry, which actually caused it by recklessly importing exotic animals for economic exploitation. No, of course not…because it’s obviously all the nutria’s fault for daring to evade their tormentors! Well, according to environmentalists, that is, who have teamed up with the unrepentant fur industry on a campaign to convince people that buying nutria-fur clothes is “green” and “eco-friendly.” It is literally and seriously being marketed as “guilt-free fur”—despite the fact that Louisiana uses federal tax dollars to pay hunters and trappers $5 a tail for killing nutria dead in typically violent and painful fashion.

The “guilt-free” justification, best expressed by the founder of fashion design collective Righteous Fur, Cree McCree, is “If (animals are) being killed anyway, then why not make something beautiful out of them?” True, Louisiana does already exterminate more than 450,000 nutria annually, and nearly 90% of the carcasses are simply left to rot in the bayou. But nutria fur is still made from murdered animals and presumably processed using the same carcinogenic chemicals as other animal furs—none of which seems particularly “green” or “guilt-free” to me.

Some animal advocates apparently disagree, as a few vegan/vegetarian fashion designers have reportedly jumped on the bandwagon** (perhaps rationalizing that at least these animals don’t spend their whole lives locked in tiny cages, like captive-bred fur-bearers do, freezing in winter and boiling in summer, mutilating themselves and cannibalizing their companions in response to intense stress). In November 2010, some of these veg fashion designers allegedly participated in a fashion show called (wait for it) Nutria-Palooza at New York City’s House of Yes sponsored by Righteous Fur***. This exclusive event featured models sashaying down the runway donning nutria-fur coats, gloves, hats, leg warmers, and even g-strings created by more than 20 professional designers.

You may be thinking at this point, “Well, Mr. AnimalRighter, at least they’ve proposed a solution to this sticky situation—what’s your suggestion? You want the nutria should just be left to wreck the ecosystem, driving your supposed friend the native muskrat into extinction while they’re at it?” And I reply, Uh, no. Granted, I’m not an expert on the environment or invasive species, and I don’t have some magically humane answer that will neatly solve this zoological dilemma…but I do want to make a few observations:

1) It was the fur industry’s commodification of a non-native species that started this whole mess in the first place: if they hadn’t brought nutria over here to be commercially exploited, these feral rodents wouldn’t be destroying coastal wetlands today.

2) Ironically, the fur industry’s solution to this problem that they created is to pursue the very same objective they originally brought nutria over here for—that is, to make killing these creatures profitable.****

3) Yet, instead of holding the fur industry accountable for destroying wetlands, environmentalists are financially and philosophically rewarding it by giving fur’s ethical image makeover a sheen of scientific legitimacy.

4) The next time alien animals endanger a native habitat as a consequence of corporate negligence and exploitation, environmentalists will yet again enthusiastically endorse the species’ merciless obliteration for expediency’s sake while conveniently ignoring the human culprits’ culpability. 

5) And finally, to reiterate, there is no such thing as “guilt-free fur”—unless it’s worn by the animal to who it rightfully belongs!

* Of southern Louisiana’s 4.2 million acres of wetlands, nutria presently impact approximately 8,475—or about 0.002% of the total (according to the state’s official Coastwide Nutria Control Program). For perspective, this represents just a minute fraction of the damage done to Gulf Coast wetlands by, say, the BP oil spill and other anthropocentric pollutants. 
 
** According to Huffington Post (although the blogger neglected to identify any veg fashion designers affiliated with Righteous Fur, and I was unable to find examples via a google search). Otherwise, trendy brands like Oscar de la Renta, Marc Jacobs and (the mostly pro-vegan) Etsy use nutria fur in their designs.

*** Righteous Fur was founded with a grant from the nonprofit Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program (BTENP); Righteous Fur, in turn, gives BTENP an unspecified portion of its proceeds. So basically, purchasing nutria fur financially supports scientists’ efforts to eradicate nutria from Louisiana.

**** Nutria fur was quite popular in the first half of the 20th century, when Hollywood starlets posed for publicity photos with stoles made from this exotic species draped around their shoulders. It fell out of fashion sometime in the late 1980s after intrepid animal activists caused a fur market crash by splattering blood-red paint on fur-wearing humans.

Californians: Urge Gov. Schwarzenegger to Sign Fur Labeling Bill Into Law

And everyone, please ask your U.S. Senators to support the federal bill that would enact a similar law nationally

The California State Assembly earned major kudos yesterday for passing AB1656, a bill that would close a longstanding loophole allowing retailers to sell fur clothing worth $150 or less without labeling these items as animal pelts. However, before this bill can become law, Governer Arnold Schwarzenegger has to sign it*. Information about how you can encourage the Governor to put his name on the dotted line—and urge federal lawmakers to pass a pending national fur labeling law—can be found at the end of this post: but first, here's some background explaining why it's important that they do so.

Congress ratified the original Fur Products Labeling Act nearly 60 years ago, but under industry pressure conceded that stores could still sell fur products worth $150 or less without labels. This was long before the technological advent of synthetic fur production, the popularity of fur trim and dyed fur in fashion design, and the development of society's widespread ethical awareness about animals exploited for clothes (which was raised almost exclusively by animal advocates' ongoing outreach efforts). I guess that's why it's only now, in the 21st century, that lawmakers are gradually getting around to fixing their predecessors' oversight.

In this day and age, when at least as many animals are killed for fur-trimmed garments as body-length coats, and few people can tell the difference between real and faux fur, many thousands of consumers unknowingly buy fur clothing and accessories because they assume that if it isn't labeled as such, it must be fake. Yet the reality today is that one in eight genuine animal fur garments are legally unlabeled, and while most of these are made from racoon dogs, some are actually the skin and fur of dogs and cats slaughtered in China. It's illegal to sell canine and feline fur in the U.S., but the outdated Fur Products Labeling Act makes effective enforcement challenging, to say the least.

With federal law lacking the teeth to keep people informed about the suffering behind their purchases, some state governments have taken forceful action to close the information gap. While California often leads the nation in passing progressive legislation, they will actually in this case only be the sixth state to enact a comprehensive fur labeling law (if Governor Schwarzenegger signs the bill). Better late then never though, so rather than dwelling on the past, let's now just get the Governator on board!

I've written before in this blog about Governor Schwarzenegger's somewhat chequered animal protection record. He has yet to weigh in either way on AB1656, but because this bill passed both chambers with overwhelming majorities, there's a good chance he'll do the right thing. Still, we need to ensure that he does—which is why we California voters need to make our voices heard now.

- Call Governor Schwarzenegger at 916-445-2841 and politely ask him to sign AB1656 into law, then follow up by sending a personal email to his office. A short, direct message is best in this case when time is of the essence, so all you need to say/write is something like "Governor Schwarzenegger, as a voter and constituent I respectfully ask that you please sign AB1656. This bill will ensure accurate labeling of fur clothing sold in California, and was recently passed with overwhelming majorities by state legislators. Thank you."

- The U.S. House of Representatives passed their version of the Truth in Fur Labeling Act (HR2480) in July 2010, and now it's the Senate's turn to follow suit by passing S1076. Call your Senators at 202-224-3121 urging them to do so, and follow up by sending them an email using the Action Alert provided by the Humane Society of the United States (sponsor of the fur labeling bills in California and other states).

* Sadly, Governor Schwarzenegger vetoed AB1656 on September 27, 2010.