Back when I was a crazy animal rights activist in college, I got naked, painted myself like a tiger, and sat in a cage for 6 hours in front of a circus to protest the inhumane treatment of animals - the idea being that it's supposed to be horrific and offensive to see a human in the same gross and vulnerable position that we gladly put animals in everyday for profit. Rake me over the coals if you must, but it was one of the most effective protest techniques I participated in. It's supposed to illicit empathy, but I understand why people take it a completely different way. Naked women seem to bring out the nasties in everybody - even feminists.

I go back and forth with PETA.

There needs to be an "all of the above" option :P

Thank goodness I clicked through to see that campaign! Otherwise, I might have forgotten that it's Mother's Day on Sunday and forgotten to phone my mum. Otherwise, eugh.

They're also racist: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfCGFAMRodY

I don't understand how one organization can be so completely wrong so often.

“t's supposed to illicit empathy, but I understand why people take it a completely different way. Naked women seem to bring out the nasties in everybody - even feminists.�
*Even* feminists? Gee I wonder why feminists would have an objection to women’s naked bodies being used to sell stuff (this case an ideologu/lifestyle).
Why is it that it’s always naked women and not men? Because women are equivalent to animals and men aren’t? Why naked anyways?
Why is it that in those PETA ads, images that are supposed to look disturbing and horrific, look hot and sexy instead?

It was a close one between Milk Gone Wild and the London... pigs one. I think the former was more gross than sexist (thought it's hard to separate the two).

TheSoyMilkConspiracy, I don't mean to disparage your political causes, don't get me wrong, but I thought you were going to follow this sentence, "Back when I was a crazy animal rights activist in college, I got naked, painted myself like a tiger, and sat in a cage for 6 hours in front of a circus to protest the inhumane treatment of animals - the idea being that it's supposed to be horrific and offensive to see a human in the same gross and vulnerable position that we gladly put animals in everyday for profit." With the acknowledgment that it's not much different to put a woman, especially a naked one painted like a cat, in a cage than an animal. I think context is important, but even at a circus, it isn't entirely out of place.

Maybe there's something to be said about the way we treat animals being akin to the way we treat women? I don't know, but I don't feel that it's as effective as other forms of protest, simply on the basis of our social expectations for women.

Ugh, the comments on Hilton's blog...yuck. First and only time I'll ever visit. "OMG UGLY SAGGY BEWBS! WTF?!?"

TheSoyMilkConspiracy (hey, I read something a while back with this crazy guy saying that soy milk was going to turn boys gay, is that what your name is a reference to?),

Thanks for telling us what you did and why, because I think you made a good point that I may not have thought of. But that angle should work with a man just as well as with a woman. I don't follow PETA's ads, but do they do this kind of stuff with men, too? Anyway, I just think the point of their ads is different. Maybe the pig one was more like yours, I don't know, I didn't entirely understand what the message was supposed to be. But the general idea I get from the others is that they associate themselves with what sexist society wants women to be like (shaven, sexy, naked, whatever) to get people to associate vegetarianism with being cool and sexy, and then occasionally they just do something crazy (and sexy/objectifying) to get attention, and during all of this, they have no qualms with sacrificing women's rights to win people over for animal rights. I think they should be honest and rename themselves something like PETABWNSM: People for the ethical treatment of animals, but women, not so much. There have to be other ways for people to advance animal rights than to stoop to the level of Budweiser and sell sex.

Unfortunately, PETA only uses young, attractive women to strip publicly for protests. So instead of being offensive and disturbing, it becomes nothing but eye candy. I guess PETA's thinking is that they'll use and objectify women to recruit men, their "real" target. Gross all the way around.

Having naked women in front of a store will actually help that business. The more effective way to protest is by spreading accurate information (PETA falls down here too, they have no problem with lying to further their cause) and encouraging consumers to boycott, call with complaints, and write letters.

The fact hat PETA never, EVER has men strip for protests is very telling.

Um, PETA uses naked men. Not nearly as often as women, and again, I'm not here to defend their tactics, because I am all too aware of the implicit problems, but let's be fair:
http://www.elainevigneault.com/the-naked-men-of-peta-ads.html
http://www.elainevigneault.com/more-naked-men-of-peta.html

And the one of David Cross totally gave me a she-rection and has been pinned on my wall since its release.

I voted for the Milk Gone Wild, but only because I didn't really "get" the London Pig thing. They're pretty much equally bothersome to me.

@TheSoyMilkConspiracy -- would it have been just as effective to be a woman in a tiger costume (faux fur of course!) or did the effectiveness come from the fact that you were a naked painted woman? Not trying to rake you over the coals much, honestly curious what you think :)

This is absolutely disgusting. But all I can think right now is "holy shit, Mother's Day is on Sunday." Fuck fuck fuck.

Thanks for the reminder PETA, but you're still assholes.

Okay, wait. It's only Mother's Day in the UK. Now I freaked out for nothing. So I doubly hate PETA. Though the disgusting nature of their tactics would surely be enough on their own.

Again, I'd like to point out that I'm not defending PETA - in both an animal rights sense AND a feminist sense. In fact, the majority of hardline animal rights activists consider PETA to be a total joke, and the naked lady thing is a pretty big reason why. Oppression of any living thing is obscene.

I meerly felt it necessary to point out that feminists can and do take part in animal rights demonstrations that utilize female nudity for a variety of reasons. I was (and still am) very much a feminist in my naked-tiger-cage days, and all I'm saying is that there are a variety of ways to interpret both the action and people's reactions. I'm trying very hard to be non-combative in this discussion, because this subject is pretty subjective.

I should also note that the people that were most offended by the demonstration were misogynists who yelled "slut" and "prostitute" at me while I was protesting and made disparaging and sexually threatening remarks about my body and sexuality. The cops surrounding the scene weren't interested in stopping the harassment because, hey - I was naked and getting what I deserved. What they were REALLY interested in was watching very carefully to see if they could catch enough of a glimpse of nipple to justify arresting me.

Ha. I was wearing pasties.

Honestly, the only ad I'm offended by is the fur trim ad. It's telling women that their bodies are icky, and this is far worse than any amount of naked women.

I tend to come down strongly on the pro-naked people side of the feminist porn wars. I understand the logic behind using sex to sell their ideology -- people come to the protest because they hear about the naked, and the whole situation makes them think that yeah, maybe animals do get treated like shit -- and I'm not offended.

Also, I have trouble with the view that the women posing for PETA are victims of exploitation. They choose to take off their clothes because they believe in a cause, and they're willing to deal with being objectified if it will help animal rights. Even if you're anti-porn, I think it's important to respect the feelings of the actual naked people. Anything else is patronizing.

I'm not in any way supporting Peta or their weird ass marketing. But I think the issue of female nudity can go either way. Is the nudity in question trying to convey a message? Or is it just trying to present women as an object men fantasize over?
And one of the posts raised the question, "why don't they have men posing naked?" That I understand. Men usually don't wear fur. Most of the time, fur coats and such are made for women. So it wouldn't make much sense to have a add campaign urging men to not wear fur, when they usually don't anyway.

Having said that, I very much doubt that seeing a picture of a naked women (no matter how sex she is) is going to make someone stop wearing fur.

FWIW, in this case it makes sense to have a woman in a cage. They are specifically protesting the use of gestation cages for pigs by demonstrating how uncomfortable it makes us to see a pregnant woman treated the way we treat pigs. I get that, and I appreciate the point they are making, and I do think it's effective. So in isolation, I don't find this stunt particularly offensive. However, in context with much most of their other ads, which demonstrate a trend of putting women in vulnerable and submissive positions compared to men, PETA's tactics just tire me out. Don't you feel strongly enough about your stance that you don't need to use sex to sell it? Jeez!

I fucking hate this fur trim ad. It's one thing to make a statement about vegetarianism, but it's completely unnecessary to make a statement about vegetarianism while simultaneously stating that it's unattractive for women to have pubic hair. Fuck you Peta.

The "pig" thing made me a bit sick. The use of "pig" and "cow" terminology is so loaded that I know women who do BDSM and who like humiliation, for whom those are hard limits, i.e. things they won't do under any circumstance. I worry that this episode will produce emotions in that model that she couldn't predict and that will stay with her a very long time. I find much of PETA's advertising vile, but this one may give me nightmares. If she were my friend, I would try my best to talk her out of going in that cage.

the idea being that it's supposed to be horrific and offensive to see a human in the same gross and vulnerable position that we gladly put animals in everyday for profit.

That sounds more than a little self-defeating considering that plenty of men would find that titillating.

Thomas, I completely agree with you. The naked, pregnant woman in the cage disgusts me in its own right, but because the word "pig" is so often used to denigrate women, I find this demonstration especially vile. I have been a strict vegetarian for years and this demonstration makes me want to eat meat just to spite them. Fuck you PETA!!!

um, for the london pig protest, why is the pregnant woman in a cage on her hands and knees? the equivalent to a pregnant pig (a quadruped) in a gestation cage would be a standing pregnant woman in a cage. women, as part of the species homo sapiens, are bipeds. i'd like to think that an animal rights organization, even a despicably misogynist one like peta, wouldn't be so brazen as to have the woman pose in a biologically incorrect but blatantly sexual way.

But again, the issue for me is that although PETA has apparently used naked men in a tiny number of their ads (which I've never seen and got nowhere near as much press as the naked women) is the fact that they have long used the objectification of women to attract attention to their point.

I'm not saying that the women who get naked for PETA are being exploited. I'm saying that PETA is promoting and using the objecitification of women as sexual objects to get attention for their cause, which has nothing to do with sex. The fact that they continually use young, naked women to get attention for their cause shows who their target audience is: men. Why aren't they targeting women as much? Why aren't they providing the same amount of male eye candy?

And yes, I agree that having the pregnant woman on all fours was uncecessary - human beings are bipeds, and would not naturally be down on all fours, whereas it's natural for pigs, which have four legs, to be standing on all fours.

PETA does, in fact, promote the subjugation of women by putting them in humiliating positions, denigrating them, and implying that yes, even breastmilk is unhealthy, beer is better. The misinformation spread by that organization alone is insane. But whether they mean to or not, they are promoting the view of women as sexual objects to further their own cause. That's what I have a problem with.

Because we are still regarded as chattel by a good number of people on this planet, or they think that we should go back to being regarded as chattel, using women in these ridiculous ads muddies the waters. It is undeniably connected to the inferior way women are viewed, and it cannot be separated from the routine sexualization of women's bodies without their consent.

Women are already compared to pigs and cows without PETA helping it along, not to mention the racism of the organization already covered.

So, I made a suggestion to Peta for an ad, and got a form letter back that explained that most of their staff as feminists they also have images of naked men, that the women who do it are doing it voluntarily blah blah and, besides "This tactic has been used since at least the 11th century, when Lady Godiva rode naked on a horse to protest taxes on the poor. "

Way to go Peta, use a LEGEND to validate your ads.

This was a pretty difficult decision, as they're all pretty horrible.
I chose Milk Gone Wild though because I think it's the most irrelevant to their message.

I mean, once the "Meet Your Meat" message comes up it's just confusing. What? My meat is an inebriated exhibitionist woman? That and it made me gag.

chefmatt: Yea, well, fur is worn by women predominantly but leather is worn by both sexes and as far as the animals are concerned its the same skin off their back. So when are we seeing PETA outside biker congregations?

I am not a fan of PETA either, so I may be missing something that will make me look ignorant (something I try to avoid!). I looked at the links with the male-centric ads - for the most part, they were "normal" looking guys - thin, muscular, "attractive." One could argue that David Cross and Ron Jeremy were the odd balls out by not fitting into the ideal body type, but I have NEVER seen a non-"ideal" woman featured in an ad. It's the typical double-standard again. It's okay to show men who are fat/unattractive/etc., but not women - women have to be thin and beautiful. (This is not an argument as the the beauty/desirability of any of the featured men.) I just notice that all PETA ads I see are of sexualized, "ideal" women's bodies. What if I, a fat vegetarian, had been willing to pose naked for PETA - would I have been welcomed with open arms? My guess is no.

They could have put the woman in a pig costume and it would have been less... wrong, and still gotten the point across. I really don't see why she had to be naked.

Chefmatt, I'd say the issue isn't that men don't really wear fur, but do PETA members have the balls to approach men wearing fur?

I've singlehandedly come up with their next sexist campaign right here:

"The only cut of roast beef that comes near my buns is 'curtain!'"

You're welcome, PETA.

SoyMilk, I clicked on one of the links you provided, with the ads of men, and it had one with a hairy man and the ad says to wear your own fur...if you're a man. Then women get told that fur is unattractive, and we shouldn't even wear our own "fur"

Huzzah to Peta for having so many crappy ads to choose from!

I picked the "fur trim" ad as the one that bothers me most. I mean... they're all horrific, completely offensive. I can't imagine that they describe themselves as "feminists" as someone above describes.

I'm just really, really sick of being told that pubic hair on women is ugly and unacceptable. Enough guys already buy into this crap. Wildberry... I saw that ad as well. It just gets my hackles up big-time when I see double standards like this. What's wrong with our fur???

Oh god I hate PETA.

I agree that the sickening part of the pigs ad is that the first thing that came to mind is that it was calling women pigs.

Arguable, the leather that people wear is coming from cows already being killed for meat, whereas fur comes from animals that we kill solely for their pelts.

I do eat meat and wear leather, occationally, but I don't wear fur. I also wholeheartedly support harsh punishments for cruelty to animals. Sadly, Arkansas is one of the few states that still doesn't consider animal cruelty a felony. Every time such a bill comes up, all the hunters complain that the bill will take away their rights because hunting might be interpreted as cruelty to animals. I always want to smack my forehead and yell "no you assholes, we're trying to increase the punishments for crimes that already exist, hunting is legal, thus it doesn't afffect you!" Sadly the fuckers who microwave kittens still get off with a slap on the hand.

I couldn't agree more, LilahCello. And Wildberry, that was my first reaction, too. The taglines on the ads with men are saying things like "wear your own fur" and "be comfortable in your own skin". They're sending a completely different message than "Fur trim. Unattractive."

Also, my dude has thing for 70s bush (as a lot of foreign guys do, at least in my experience). I guess they're not targeting his demographic.

The pubic hair ad is the one that pissed me off the most.
And I really didn't see what was racist about the AKC/KKK ad. It was actually mildly funny. Explanation?

I hate PETA, always have, but I'm not terribly offended by the "Mother's Day" ad. Maybe it's because I'm pregnant? No one forced that woman to take off her clothes and get in the cage, she's protesting, pointing out what she believes is a valid point that if you think a pregnant woman shouldn't be in a cage, neither should a pregnant pig. I don't think that women and pigs are equivalent, but SHE does. She's not being exploited. PETA is using the shock value of seeing a naked pregnant woman in a place society thinks she shouldn't be to get attention, and the shock value of seeing a pregnant woman actually having a "voice" and using it, especially for something that doesn't have to do with babies or women. I'm pregnant myself, and I still see myself as the same person with the same voice and political rights and opinions that I had months ago. But society likes to see us only as "pregnant women," obsessed with babies, not as people. It's shocking to see us with a voice--something that feminists have known for a long time. Look at that photo that pops up on the Flickr column, the one with the pregnant woman with something written on her belly. It wouldn't have the same effect if she weren't very pregnant. PETA's just doing the same thing.

I still hate them, though!

PETA contributes money to domestic terrorists (see http://petakillsanimals.com/news_detail.cfm?ID=3564). I'm far more concerned about their channeling money to groups that threaten the lives of researchers than their stupid publicity stunts. I wonder if most of the people who contribute to PETA have an inkling what they're supporting.

MLEmae, it's wackos like PETA that cause the kinds of problems your state has. PETA is against hunting, just as it's basically against the killing of any animals for any reason (though their pet shelters are not no-kill, but whatever), and unfortunately for people who support animal rights but are not rabid, fanatical nutballs, people like your Arkansas hunters think of PETA when they think of animal rights. So if a bill comes up supporting animal rights, they fear it will be the start of a slippery slope toward the eradication of their hunting rights. And why shouldn't they feel that way? The most vocal animal group they know about would like to take away their right to hunt. The animal rights movement needs a loud but sane voice. PETA does more harm to the movement than good, because they discredit themselves and alienate people who want to compromise. No matter how many naked women you put in pigpens, you're never going to convince humanity to stop eating meat. No matter how many young girls you get to flash their breasts, you're not going to stop humanity from drinking milk. If PETA really cared about the welfare of animals, they'd accept these realities and work with the industries to ensure the animals have a good quality of life before they are killed, and that the methods by which they are killed are humane.

I think it would be perfectly fair, at this point, to draw attention to some anti-objectification arguments by using images of people clubbing baby seals.

cadylee, I totally agree with you about how much PETA hurts the cause. I'm as much frustrated with them as I am with the hunters who won't allow the bill to pass. I understand the fear of the slippery slope, but I don't think that increasing the punishment for crimes that are already on the books is in any way a step towards making hunting illegal.

"And Wildberry, that was my first reaction, too. The taglines on the ads with men are saying things like 'wear your own fur' and 'be comfortable in your own skin'. They're sending a completely different message than 'Fur trim. Unattractive.'"

Hmm.

What if an anti-fur campaign was pro-male-*and*-female-human-body as well?

Imagine posters with the positive slogans showing people of all sexes and skin types (different colors, patterns, textures, everything) wearing alternatives to fur* and leather, sometimes posing with furry animals that are alive and well...

* I've seen people claim that killing animals for fur isn't violent if the fur is necessary to keep warm. Maybe this audience would be more convinced by campaigners in Everest-appropriate non-fur jackets than by nude campaigners?

Ingrid Newkirk was on The Colbert Report last night. The arrogance and egotism and hypocrisy that woman spews makes my teeth clench. I've lost friends because they were PETA supporters and I wouldn't let it slide. They're so anti-animal, so anti-people, the only "cause" they're really working for is money. Everything they do is wretched and these ads are just icing.

I voted for the fur trim ad, which is brutally sexist and offensive for the sake of a bad pun, but if there were a write-in section how about the "Holocaust on your plate" ad campaign. That was one of the most disgusting pieces of moral relativism I've seen in my life.

PETA's a crazy group that doesn't do that much for animals, and even less for humans. Saving the lives of some animals by engendering stereotypes in future generations is the equivalent of telling your kid black people are inferior as long as it saves a few dogs. The future's too important to allow these kind of ads to be tolerated.

You know, the whole "I'd rather go naked" thing is just dumb. They could easily put someone in a clown suit or something, and it could be "I'd rather walk around in a clown suit." Wouldn't that get the point across just as well? And all without objectification.

I've been a vegetarian for over a decade, and PETA makes me want to cook up a big ole steak and dive in.

Not that I'd have the faintest idea how to cook a steak... but still.

I'm waiting for PETA to put together an ad saying "Is your bitch too uppity? Stop feeding her meat", with a picture of a lioness tearing into an antelope.

However, until PETA actually goes there, I'm going to stick with the "Fur Trim" ad as being the most offensive.

There should be an option for "All of the ads are gross and PETA is a sick terrorist organization that gives animal rights a bad name."

"Why is it that it’s always naked women and not men? Because women are equivalent to animals and men aren’t? Why naked anyways?"

You didn't look into your above statement.
Peta has many many men that have appeared in their adds.
http://www.elainevigneault.com/more-naked-men-of-peta.html

Can I just say how completely sad I felt when I showed the "Unhappy Mother's Day for Pigs" ad to a male friend and he LAUGHED. Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.

We should send letters to them from "People for the Ethical Treatment of Women."

I have long been annoyed with PETA. (My father runs a horse and carriage business. We are apparently horrible, evil people for daring to own animals and have them pull something where the weight is on the wheels and not the horse, but that's a different story.)

I hate PETA. I'll admit it. This is just another thing that ads to their vileness. I have a friend who supports PETA (not a crazy, though), while I find very ironic.

Has anyone besides me noticed that the extreme animal-rights agenda and the extreme embryo-rights agenda are very similar?

What they have in common is a strong, but narrowly focused moral impulse -- protect this life form, here, now -- combined with a failure to place this moral impulse in any context, above all in any ecological context.

For the record, I am usually a practicing vegetarian, but for environmental reasons, not animal-rights reasons. I consider it environmentally unfeasible to protect animal lives on a planet where quite a few animals themselves live by predation. Eating lower on the food chain is a moral habit that humans can practice to a large degree without sacrificing their health. However, wolves cannot follow suit, and we would do irreparable harm to ecosystems if we required all wolves to live on tofu products.

I admire women who refuse, for moral reasons, to have abortions as much as I admire women and men who are committed vegans. However, when activists in either group try to compel everybody else to live according to their own strict moral code, I believe they have not thought through what would likely be the ecological consequences if everybody complied: on the one hand, a population explosion of deer (and other large herbivores) killing the planet's remaining forests; on the other, a population explosion of 12-20 billion human beings struggling to stave off mass starvation by converting all of the Earth's surface into cropland.

I'm an animal rights guy who gives to a lot of groups running the spectrum from the borderline militant (Last Chance for Animals) to the dignified mainstream (Humane Society). I do a lot of stuff with PCRM, PETA's much more restrained and thoughtful anti-vivisection arm. But I don't give to PETA, largely because of their advertising.

The founder of PETA, Ingrid Newkirk, is an amazing woman and a strong feminist. Somehow, the PR campaigns for PETA don't reflect her vision.

And Jakob, for heaven's sake, no vegan I've ever met with a brain has ever wanted to train wolves to eat tofu. A global vegan diet for humans is doable without straining the environment.

Cattle, as any vegan will tell you, contribute more greenhouse gas emissions than all the jets in the air combined. You do more for the environment by going vegan than by refusing to fly.

**gets off soapbox**

Anyhow, I've gotten into some heated arguments with my friends in the AR world who do support the "by any means necessary" campaigns of PETA.

I don't think its at all fair to label PETA 'sexist.'

These women are political activists, free adults advancing their chosen political agenda with any legal means at their disposal.

They have made the observation that:

1. a protest involving 2 naked people draws more media attention to their cause then a protest involving 200 clothed people. its intended to be attention grabbing because they want attention for their cause.

2. people pay attention to racy ads in a way they don't pay attention to purely guilt provoking ads.

3. given that their issue (veganism) is something that involves targeting popular opinion and changing people's lifestyles (rather than lobbying congress or parliaments or whatever) by trying to be sexy and playful (as opposed to so much of the anti-sex, shaming, guilting, public service ads you tend to see) they can make their lifestyle choice seem appealing to broad groups of young people. whether this works or not, its an attempt at having a bit more media savvy than most leftwing activist groups.

I do not think that any use of female sexuality in the media or female nudity or even appeals to traditional beauty standards is automatically 'sexist.' A naked woman in media isn't automatically being oppressed or exploited or promoting sexism, it depends entirely on the context and motivation. I don't get why PETA evokes this type of response when it (keeping in mind that its an overwhelmingly female organization) uses female sexuality for a political cause but feminist artists can use female sexuality for art or feminist political aims without being labeled sexist.

To automatically label peta activists who use their bodies to advance their political agenda as sexist or somehow participating in sexism is patronizing I think to the women who choose to promote something they believe in that way. Its not appropriate to project personal feelings about how it would feel to be in their position onto them, because its not about women in general, its about their particular politics. I personally wouldn't get naked or try to be sexually suggestive for a political cause but I don't think i'm in any position to tell other women they shouldn't be allowed to.

The naked PETA ads don't make me think about animal rights (and I'm vegan and spend a lot of time thinking about how awesome animals are and getting upset at their treatment). Especially compared to ads featuring images of what actually happens to animals before they become food or "fashion". Of course, if people want to use their bodies to make a statement, then that's fine. I just think that sometimes there are more effective ways of educating people.

I agree with Carol J. Adams (author of The Sexual Politics of Meat) who said, "there is no need to exploit women to save animals".

Last night I was watching Ace Ventura 2 on tv, and there was a great bit where a woman wearing fur talks about how great it is to wear nature's spoils. Ace responds by punching a little old man and then wearing HIM around his neck and commenting on how wonderful it feels to wear nature's spoils. It was hilarious, and certainly proved the point without anyone getting naked.

wow...i apologize, PETA, for having pubic hair...

obviously PETA cares more about animals than women,,, wonder if they care about female animals??

thanks peta, because i don't get the message that my body hair is unattractive enough. fuckin disgusting.

ps i love how the "LOL PETA IZNT SEXIST THEY TOADILY USE TEH NEKKID MENZ LIKE 2% OF THE TIME" people will ONLY COMMENT ON THE NAKEDNESS. as if this is what feminists who recognize the disgustingness of peta are against.

their ads are so obviously sexist it's fucking smacking you in the face. you have to have a serious lack of understanding of sexism to not see how these ads are incredibly offensive.

sdklfhdslkjh

PETA YOU DISGUST ME LIKE NO OTHER.

@ commiegirl: THANK YOU.

@ devan louise: Um, no. Naked women alone aren't sexist. Naked women in PETA ads are considerably less sexist than naked women in, say, beer ads. Women in PETA ads are there to draw attention to themselves and their beliefs. Whether the naked women in beer ads etc. are sexist is a topic for another day, but I'm going to come down on the side of no.

PETA uses sex because it gets them media attention and free publicity. The mother's day ad is trying to make people think. Would you treat a pregnant woman like this? No? Then don't treat a pregnant animal like this.

Whether or not you agree with the sentiment, it's a fairly effective strategy.

I have to say thank you to this site. I was looking for the mothers day protest and you brought that anti fur trim add to my attention.I have never seen it before! That is sooo funny, you know you laughed when you saw it! PETA is so awesome! How can you bash someone for having such a strong compassion that they would sit out there and do that to help the animals?! I have gotten naked numerous times for PETA and I would do it again in a heartbeat! Dont bash PETA when it is us choosing to get naked for the cause. If I where out there in a turtle neck do you think I would get have the attention I get standing out there with a sign and naked? NO! So I will keep doing it.

So I went to the source (Peta) and clicked their "submit an idea" link and asked them to be a little more creative and stop objectifyng women's bodies in their campaigns this was their long and absurd response:

"First, please know that, as an organization staffed largely by feminist women, we would not do something that contributed to the serious problems that women face. We feel that there is nothing shameful or “wrong� about being naked, and we believe that women—and men—should have the choice to use their own bodies to make social statements. This tactic has been used since at least the 11th century, when Lady Godiva rode naked on a horse to protest taxes on the poor. Far from being exploited, our “naked� demonstrators and billboard models choose to participate in our actions because they want to do something to make people stop and pay attention to animal abuse.

Take Traci Bingham, for example, who posed for our “All Animals Have the Same Parts� ad campaign (http://www.GoVeg.com/feat/tracibee/). She is a deeply committed vegetarian who is known to millions for her television work, such as beating out a platoon of men to excel in an endurance test called Boot Camp. She chose to use her body to bring public attention to a serious animal issue. In this case, Ms. Bingham felt offended by the traditional “meat� posters that treat animals as “parts,� and she wanted to make the point that neither they nor women should be viewed as parts—we are all precious.

Consider that it is the societies that allow women to wear revealing clothing in which women have the most rights and the most power. Likewise, it is the societies that punish women for wearing revealing clothing in which women have the fewest rights and the least power—they are considered chattel who must do as they are told. Should women only be allowed to participate in activism if they promise not to show their bodies or use them to make social statements? If a person chooses to use her physicality and sexuality to convey a message of her choosing, aren’t those who would censor her, even if their motives are well-intended, also somewhat guilty of disrespect and repression?

Although our use of “nudity� is attention-grabbing, we don’t rely on it for the majority of our outreach, nor do we use it gratuitously; it is intended to underscore our message, whether it is “I’d rather go naked than wear fur,� to emphasize the health benefits of a vegetarian diet, or to show the vulnerability of animals in laboratories or circuses. We would also like to note that we do not feature only women in our more provocative ads; please see the following examples:

· http://www.FurIsDead.com/feat-rodman2.asp
· http://www.PETA.org/feat/jennaethan/
· http://www.FurIsDead.com/feat-kristoff.asp"

Basically, if you are scantly clothed you are liberated and free. If you are wearing too many clothes such as head scarves, you are oppressed.

Wow, how simplistic. My jeans and my oversized t-shirt OPPRESS me, so in order to be liberated I must show my tits for the Girls Gone Wild Camera. Un-freaking-believeable.
Please join me in telling these folks that their assumptions about women's bodies, nakedness (or lack thereof) are completely oversimplified and misinterpreted.

@nattles: wha...what? i don't think you understood what i said AT ALL.

i wasn't saying that the nakedness was sexist. i was saying most of the people who refuse to admit peta is sexist only comment on the nakedness and how it isn't sexist. [which i don't disagree with.] they completely ignore everything else which is BLATANTLY offensive [fur trim, hello?]. they're acting as if the nakedness is what feminists have a problem with when it's obviously not.

You guys don't even have the worst one up there. Remember the picture of chained animals next to slaves. That was by far the most offensive.

I don't know if my other comment posted, but the most offensive was the ad with chained animals next to chained slaves.