Book Review - The Sexual Politics of Meat
Interview with Carol Adams on KPFT (radio)
Carol J. Adams is the author of many groundbreaking books. "The Sexual Politics of Meat," one of the first books to lay out the parallel between speciesism and sexism, is now a popular college text book. Her brand new book, "The Pornography of Meat," presents the argument in an easily digestible form, using advertisements and posters from popular culture to show the ways in which women and non-human animals are similarly objectified.
Today's (Sunday, July 27) Dallas Morning News ran an op-ed by Carol J. Adams headed, 'Marketing Women: Anthropornography treats females like meat.' It is in the viewpoints section, page 5H. The op-ed is not available on the Dallas Morning News website, so I will paste it at the bottom of this alert. It would be great if the op-ed generated some veg-friendly letters; is it right to treat animals like meat?
Here is the Dallas Morning News op-ed:
MARKETING WOMEN: 'Anthropornography treats females like meat', Carol J. Adams
"Hunting for Bambi" has generated a lot of media attention during this summer vacation, including a Viewpoint column Tuesday. This supposed $10,000 hunting spree was said to allow men to chase two naked women (except for sneakers) and try to shoot them with paintball.
Now it is debated whether "Hunting for Bambi" is anything more than one man's creative promotion for a pornographic video of that name. If I were still writing my latest book, The Pornography of Meat, Hunting for Bambi might get a mention. But it wouldn't dominate its pages.
Even as a video, it is really only a further extension of a pervasive viewpoint in our culture that sees women as meat, or at least has fun with implying that they are, and sees animals eaten as meat as female.
Often, the media participate in this rather than commenting with horror on it. From my files I could pull out the image of a sexy, anorexic cow, with bangles on her arm, with spots that look like a sports bra, holding a picture of a big, fat, old cow. The image is akin to a weight loss ad.
And where was this image? In a national newspaper, illustrating an article on a low fat hamburger. It seemed to announce, "I used to be an old cow, but now with this low fat hamburger I am thin and sexy again."
The idea of cows eating a low-fat hamburger might be laughable if mad cow disease hadn't entered the scene precisely because cows were fed cows.
Another newspaper, this time from the West Coast, another image: a very sexy cow, clad in a very skimpy bikini with one high heel pump kicked off, the other about ready to fall, her pink fishnet stockings pulled thigh-high. She has big pink lips, mascara-ed eyes, and a large feather standing erect at the top of her head.
And right there, with her rump hanging way over a champagne glass are the words A REAL CHEAP DISH, showing us all just who is a real cheap dish -- a cow. The article that is dwarfed by the headline and this posed, sexually attractive 'come-and-get-me-big-boy' cow is about fixing cheap cuts of meat.
In fact, these images are so prolific a friend coined a term for them, 'Anthropornography' -- animals posed as strippers and prostitutes.
Here are some more examples:
A local Dallas place advertises, LIVE NUDE LOBSTERS, as though one were going to a girlie show. Live nude lobsters. Another local restaurant with a cardboard cow with a chicken's head posed near its front door asking, 'do you want a piece of me?' STRIP TEASE screamed a billboard on 635 near Marsh; over a photograph of a strip steak.
Recently in California, Carl's Jr. ran a TV advertisement that began with a statement like, "We can't usually show large breasts on national television." The visual was a white chicken with a black censored bar across it's chest. The ad went on to say, "...unless it's on a sandwich."
And then there was the restaurant in Chicago. It offered a 'double d cup breast of turkey sandwich.'
A local bookstore, in a very upscale mall, sells Playboar, a spoof on Playboy, subtitled 'The Pig Farmer's Playboy.' It is positioned next to the check out counter. When I asked them why they were selling this, I was told, 'We can't keep this in stock!'
With anthropornography the attitudes towards women found in pornography can be expressed freely yet in a disguised way -- with nonhuman animals as the objects. How much safer it is to think the problem is in Las Vegas, that the problem is over there, not here, or in Seattle, or in New York or in Chicago.
Anthropornography provides a way for men to bond publicly around misogyny. Men can publicly consume what is usually private. Like Playboar, these images, these advertisements, these menus assure their consumers that everything is OK, their world view is OK.
It makes the degradation and consumption of women's images and of meat appear playful and harmless, "just a joke." Because women aren't being depicted, no one is seen as being harmed and so no one has to be accountable. The degradation of women can be enjoyed without anyone being honest about it.
Everyone knows that at one level they aren't talking about pigs or turkeys or cows. Sexual jokes at the expense of women can be made without being upfront about it. They might not be Hunting for Bambi, but they want the next best thing.
Unfortunately, our culture is giving it to them.
Carol J. Adams is the author of 'The Sexual Politics of Meat' and most recently, 'The Pornography of Meat'.
Yours and the animals',
Karen Dawn
Source: Adams Carol J. , 2003, "The Pornography of Meat",
publisher: Amazon Books.
