Hi Ya’ll Welcome Back!!
We’re going to have a little bit of fun this week, lots of pictures will be involved :).
We’ll be talking about a few different things this week but for the most part we’ll be discussing the similar treatment of animals and women, and how women are often refereed to as animals in a very negative light.
The following images depict different things, but all together they highlight the ‘normalized’ oppression of both animals and women.
This picture is quite repulsive to my eyes, as if the shirt wasn’t offensive enough, they are assuminglygrilling steaks or burgers or some type of meat with the biggest smiles surrounded by weird signs about ‘meat’. God men are weird. Carol Adams, an American writer, feminist and animal advocate discusses 9 critical points about feminist-veganism. The very first point states “Meat-eating is associated with virility, masculinity. Meat eating societies gain male identification by their choice of food” (The Politics of Carol J. Adams, Carol Adams page 13). I think this above picture might be exactly what Adams had in mind when writing this point. This whole displayed scene does a great job at highlighting the oppression of both animals and women within the same context. Quite literally, they put the head of a cow on the body of a woman. Personally, I wouldn’t consider myself to hold the same extensive beliefs as Carol Adams, as I eat meat. Mostly chicken and fish, but occasionally I’ll have a bacon burger. Yet I still find the above picture ridiculously offensive. *It’s important to note that ecofeminism is greatly flexible, so you don’t have to share the exact same beliefs as other ecofeminists.* Whether you are a vegetarian or no you can still be an ecofeminist.
Now onto the next picture, take a minute to really look at it before reading the following…
Much like the above picture there’s a lot going on here, it’s just a bit more subtle I guess you could say. First off the most obvious, once again a woman’s body is being combined with meat, except this time it’s dead meat. Which is even more offensive, I mean seriously? The little bubble that says “eat me” is quite obviously a sexual innuendo in regard to the woman’s body. This might just be me reading a bit too much into it but, the placing of the sign; a street late at night, and the woman’s fish net tights with tall red heels definitely insinuates the stereotype of a ‘prostitute’. Honestly the whole thing is just sickening. When I came across this photo it automatically reminded me of Carol Adams’ idea of ‘Pornography of Meat’. “We see how pornographic photographs, like advertisements, are carefully constructed: nothing that appears in the photograph or the advertisement is there by accident” (Carol Adams, The Pornography of Meat). This advertisement is very carefully constructed all the way down the the spelling of ‘nite’ versus ‘night’. The shorter spelling has a very flirty connotation to it. The entirety of the advertisement is exactly how Adams describes it to be, clever, specific and degrading.
Now would you look at this beauty. Beautifully insulting, degrading and just plain arrogant. In Carol Adams’ interview they discuss the “feminization and sexualization of animals”. This whole concept is very demoralizing for both females and animals. Adams’ specifically says “Animalizing women and feminizing animals helps…..because it renders women and dead animals used as flesh as commodities” (The Politics of Carol J. Adams, Carol Adams page 15). This picture really has a lot to it and I’m going to try to not spit all my thoughts out at once. Firstly, the cow is obviously made to have the shape of a woman’s body while still clearly being an ‘animal’, this is degrading to a woman while portraying a very wrong image of a cow. The position she is in has a very sexual sense to it, or at the very least a flirtatious one. Frankly this is really disgusting to me, sexualizing an animal, well that’s a conversation we don’t need to get into, but I hope we can agree it’s very degrading and just plain wrong. Lastly, the measuring tape around her waste, this is the kicker. Stereotypically, men want a ‘fat’ cow and a ‘skinny’ woman. So what even is this picture? It’s clearly portraying a woman so I think the measuring tape is implying that a skinny woman makes for a sexy woman. Yet the bigger a cow the more meat they get, so that part makes very little sense. But then again most things men do doesn’t make much sense to me. This picture and the conversation that developed from it made me wonder is it easier for men to degrade women and see them as less than if they think of us as animals? What do you think?
Through images like the ones above we can learn a lot. We learned that the objectification of women is often connected to the oppression of animals. This is often done through the sexualization of women/animals in sometimes a very vulgar way. Our patriarchal system is very much to blame for this as the white man, surprise, surprise, believes he is above and better than all. It’s people like Carol Adams who are doing the work to pick the entire thing apart to highlight the absurdity of the whole system, that’s hopefully going to spark some change.
To wrap things up today I want to discuss one more picture.
This image is an ad from 1970 for the slacks that the man is wearing. There’s a lot going on in this image. Similar to what we saw above, a female and an animal are portrayed to be physically connected. Much like the restaurant ad, a dead animal is connected to the woman. Although this time we have a man in the picture, showing a clear display of domination over the woman and skinned animal carpet. “Lots of ads appealing to white, heterosexual man seem to be rebuilding what feminism and veganism have threatened” (The Politics of Carol J. Adams, Carol Adams page 16). This ad is clearly aimed towards the white cyst man, in which it attempts to normalize the dehumanizing of women within any household. How do you feel about ads like this?
Thanks for reading Ya’ll!!
See ya in two weeks!
Enjoy your Spring Break!!
The first photo you choose is a great example of showing the objectification of women and nonhuman animals especially by men. The fact it is a woman’s body with the head of a bull is inferring that women and animals are practically the same entity. The saying is originally got milk with an image of a cow, yet on these shirts it says “got meat?” This stupid question is animilazing women, referring to them as a piece of meat. The fact all the men in the photo are smiling show they are happy about this statement. This brings up another problem with the oppression of women and nonhuman animals. Many people living in our patriarchal society do not realize this issue, ignore it or simply do not care. These men seem completely unphased wearing these absurd shirts and are probably feeling very masculine while they grill up their meat to eat. The second photo you choose, as you said is a woman being portrayed as meat. We see a drawing of a burger with what one would consider sexy legs, wearing fishnets and heels. We can draw in to the assumption that the main consumer here is men. Whoever put up this sign clearly wants men to come in and order a burger and maybe also think about women while they do so? It would make sense since the nonhuman animal who created the burger and women are both consumables in this scenario. The third photo you choose of the cartoon cow with the measuring tape around its waste was one I also chose. This picture is objectifying both women and nonhuman animals, by making the cow have the body shape of a stereotypical “fit” women and trying to make the cow look sexy. To answer your question about this picture, yes I definitely feel like it is easier to degrade women if they are portrayed as an animal. This is also not a direct image of a woman so one could argue they are not degrading women, even though any rational person could depict the message here. Not going to lie my mouth dropped a bit when I saw the image you chose! I think it fits this discussion extremely well— it is so DEGRADING. I even as a woman feel a bit offended by it. It makes me wonder if all men secretly just see all women as animals. The fact the man is basically stepping on the woman’s head shows the support of a patriarchal society and the fact men are often seen domination women as well as animals.
Thank you for ending your blog in a question, because let me tell you I absolutely despise ads like this. You picked some ads that are much harder to see as redeemable, which will make an analysis of them fairly simple. Starting with my most hated ad, the ‘it’s nice to have a girl around the house’ ad, it’s pretty clear what the problem is. The woman depicted here is a tiger skin rug, for some reason? This is an ad for pants, not rugs, so it just feels gaudy to have the woman depicted this way. Lisa Kemmerer’s The Pornography of Meat, provides some insight into this idea, by stating that, “These images are part of the structure of our culture, so we fail to notice that women are also being exploited: we fail to notice that ‘consumable’ animals are invariably portrayed as feminine, as sexual – available to men, just like female human beings.” This ad is overtly misogynistic, and does, as the quote says, exploit woman through the relationship with animal products. Moving to another photo, the hamburger with fishnets, we can look at Carol Adams’, The Politics of Meat, where she discusses this sort of depiction by stating that “False mass terms function as short hand. They are not like us. Our compassion need not go there, to their situation, their experience, or if it does, it may be diluted” (6) This sort of depiction is false and creates a false relationship between food and femininity.
Your blogs are always so fun to read because they are always so engaged and feels like a real blog. To start with your first image, I want to add to your points about the oppression of animals and women in the photo. Previously in our class, our professor mentioned, an example of women being called cows as a form of oppression. This photo immediately made me think of that. It also brought up the sexualization of women which is something Carol Adams mentions in her interview. She states “the sexualization of animals and the sexual objectification of women thus overlap and reinforce one another. In a fluid move, these conventions are used to sell dead bodies” (Adams 15). In the first photo you posted as well as the second women’s body parts for instance the legs, breasts are often emphasized on to sell or advertise typically to men. These parts are added to animals, burgers (which was once an animal) which is what Adams means by “conventions to sell dead bodies.” I believe this is what Adams means by the sexualization of animals and sexual objectification of women overlapping with one another as well. When boobs are added it somehow makes a burger or a cow look so much more appetizing to men. I like how you really picked up on the sexualization of an animal using what is seen as a “feminine” body as the body of a cow in your last chosen image. Once again bringing up that conversation about how women have been referred to as cows. This image not only feeds into the oppression of women by saying to be sexy to be flirty you need to have a skinny waste but curvy everywhere else. While I do eat meat, I can say that all these advertisements have been such a turn off and make me not want to eat meat. I think they help highlight that the reason for sexualization of women and animals and the oppression of women and animals is caused by the patriarchy we see every day. Your last image really highlights that too. I really enjoyed reading this blog and look forward to the next!
I love that you ended your blog in a question, not many of the blogs I’ve read have done that so far. So you ask, how I feel about ads like that. I feel like all the ads before and even some now are degrading to women. The ad itself was to market pants for men, so why was my attention drawn to the woman’s head on a skinned rug with the man’s foot on top of her head? They could have done the ad very differently. They did not have to degrade women in the process, but sadly that is how patriarchy works. The ad portrays this idea that men are the head of the house, while the women are just nice to have around. This ad was specifically targeting men who feel they are superior to women. This ad also portrays women as animals. In this case, the woman is a skinned tiger. This isn’t the stereotypical cow depiction, but the woman is still portrayed as an animal. Kemmerer states that “the presentation of women in common advertisements, noting such interesting factors as viability cues, body chopping, and missing referent – always a white man” (Kemmerer). The ad you chose had all those elements.
Hi Madison, it was great reading your blog and I know four people have already commented on it but I couldn’t help. Anyways, the first picture you chose, when I saw that I just skipped it because I found it absurd, I mean, you are selling meat and that too isn’t any official restaurant or something it just looks like that there’s some kind of activity going on and they have set up a stall. What was the need to have such t.shirts? People would have come otherwise when they’ll be hungry, and not that as if you are literally offering a women with meat. Just absurd.
Moving on to the next picture, I chose the same picture for my blog, and the detail you caught, the fish net tights and red heels, I didn’t focused on those much, but yeah it’s more like get your meat and complementary “prostitute”. I mean seriously? I don’t get this mentality of such people, why do you need to link meat and women as if they come together. And what’s the need to sexualize the animal meat with women, people will come to eat your burger and stuff even without it. Yeah it might be that adding such posters and boards, more people than usual would come which in itself is weird.
Also it’s weird how these men wants women to be slimmer but wants animal to be healthy to get more meat as you mentioned. By reading this it clicked me about Muslim festival, “Bakrah Eid”, I have also mentioned about this event in my previous blog that how people sacrifice animals in the name of God. But here the main point is that the owner of those animals do a do-over of them as if they are readying them for an auction. This link bellow shows a cow with all the Jewels and decorative thing around them to make them look beautiful just like women does, getting ready to look stunning for their first date, or mother readying their daughters when some guys’ family visit to see their daughter for marriage in Indian culture.
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/177118197820885530/.
Now the question that you ask, I believe that for men anything is easy if it comes to women and animals, because for them this world exists because of them. And I hate to say this but it is our (women) fault. So many women even now live in that old age where women were to serve their husband and were actually slaves of their husband and their only work was to work in the kitchen and give birth to children.
In my community there’s a very strange tradition of serving men food first in every family get together and then women eats afterwards. I often ask my mom that why men are served first. The only answer she has is, men works outside for their families so what if they eat first. Seriously? I mean being a women you are belittling your self no matter you are housewife but being a housewife is 24 hours job which is not easy. Have you ever thought about it that why these husbands never realize that their wives are also doing something for them too. Why they haven’t for once said that we’ll eat together. I think is because according to them their “housewives” have no value and they do nothing but relax being at home. Which I also relate it to your last picture where it says, “it’s nice to have girl around the house”, Yeah because that’s only what you want from a girl, PLEASURE. And that’s the only reason these men want women for.
Last but not the least, I usually get very disappointed when I hear things like beauty is must, which includes being fair and slim. I have a burn mark on my shoulder and my parents often says to get plastic surgery done because it wouldn’t look good after marriage. When I was young I was ready for it but now I always tell them that whoever wants to except me it would have to be with my mark or else sorry I don’t want you. And I will never ever change my self for someones pleasure never.