by Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux
I keep hoping that I’ve written my last angry post about PETA, but kind of like their partner in objectifying-women-while-making-other-supposedly-progressive-points, American Apparel, they keep surprising me. And not in a good way. PETA’s latest video, oh so cleverly titled the “State of the Union Undress” (yes, we get it), uses a woman stripping to put forward points about veganism and fake fur, but in the most tasteless, offensive and ineffective way possible. Before I rant anymore about it, perhaps it’s best for you to see it for yourself (although it’s really not necessary to watch all of the painful five minutes of the video – skip around):
My first complaint is that this video is not sexy. The woman who is stripping looks extremely uncomfortable. The jokes are bad (do we really need more stupid penis puns?) and the intercut clips of past State of the Union audiences are just weird. But they’re also distracting as hell. PETA is probably going to get a lot of people to watch this video, simply because it’s pissing a lot of people off, but I took nothing away from what the woman was saying, because I was focusing instead on the jokes and the weird images of old men and the fact that oh right, while she was talking about veganism, she was also stripping.
Apart from the obvious point that the way to get people to stop eating meat is not to treat women like meat, this video isn’t going to accomplish any of its aims. I’ve heard all the old arguments that PETA is simply using the “sex sells” message, and that they shouldn’t be blamed for doing so because it’s effective, but I just don’t buy it. I remembered almost nothing of the message of the video, except for a vague mention of H&M’s policies on fur. And I’m very sympathetic to PETA’s stated aims (I’m a vegetarian and certainly I care about animal rights) – if not their methods of conveying them. So what have we taken away? It’s funny to juxtapose a video of a woman very uncomfortably and unsexily stripping with some archival footage of old white male senators clapping? Get real, PETA. And please just grow up.
The transcript can be found here:
http://www.peta.org/feat/stateoftheunion10/transcript.asp
Hi Amelia,
I’m not sure what you mean by “objectifying”. Is selling sex the same as objectification? And is anything really being sold here? I personally don’t see an unethical exchange of goods or money as much as I see a tasteless and arbitrary association and tons of ineffective jokes. I think it’s a bit strange that she’s stripping, but I personally don’t have a problem with nudity, so I’d like to hear a little more about what makes the video so offensive to viewers like you.
Additional comments on the video:
Blooper alert: at 3:40 when she takes her bra off, the camera pans down a bit, and you see her wearing a black skirt, even though the narrative cut/paste thing has just told us she took her skirt and stockings off. I guess they ran out of time when they were editing this little clip.
And for anyone who’s curious to see the “uncensored” version that the youtube video vigorously advertises, it’s not that exciting. I don’t get the hype about censoring nipples anyway. It’s kind of an arbitrary distinction to make when determining what’s acceptable/unacceptable on youtube, especially when youtube allows uncensored videos of assault. But hey youtube, no nipple, no problem, right?