“Are you hungry?� one of these women said, making hungry sound like an X-rated word. “Ravenous?�
Yet another in an ongoing series of ads, eateries and comments that equate women and meat.
(Thanks to Erin for the link.)
Today in women-as-meat news…
13 Comments
there’s a strip club in denver that a lot of people seem to frequent “for the food”.
i felt a small amount of joy when i got to the end of the review and saw that the guy only gave it one star.
I wonder if anybody else caught The Colbert Report last night–in a segment on a hunting website, Colbert commented on a photo series called “Racks,” in which nearly naked women are posed with the antlered skulls of deer. Quoth he: “You can see everything but the line between ‘date’ and ‘prey!’”
Genius. And not too far off from the “meat” implication, too.
I would highly recommend the work of Carol Adams – she wrote The Sexual Politics of Meat and Animals and Women: Feminist Theoretical Explorations. I don’t agree with everything she says, but her work in the first book especially is pretty compelling. I think the second book is an edited edition, but with some really great chapters.
The good news is that they actually talked to and featured the women’s voices in the article.
The bad news is that they pretty much said the dumbest shit ever.
I agree on the Carol Adams point. I was just talking to a friend about The Sexual Politics of Meat (and a great article in Bitch about some reasons to be a vegetarian feminist) and he thought the correlation of meat and women was “outdated”, and that I sound like I’m stuck in angry generalizations about the 1950s. Sorry to see he’s wrong (though not surprised).
Do any art history types remember the “Texas Cattle Queen” poster? This is one of the earlier examples of women as meat metaphors. Here’s an example on eBay: http://cgi.ebay.com/Texas-Cattle-Queen-Nude-Beef-Vintage-Art-Postcard_W0QQitemZ330088290753QQihZ014QQcategoryZ4929QQcmdZViewItem
Oh totally, Elizabeth. At least two of our previous women-as-meat posts linked to Carol Adams’ work, and it’s always worth mentioning again.
That Texas Cattle Queen poster is disgusting.
But see, now all the surburbia housewives can get together after pole sex 101 and start serving steaks in low-cut frocks to additionally empower themselves and Penthouse Steakhouse can be considered a bastion of
feminist revolution!
As the world turns…
:/
lightwork: I saw that article too, and I really liked it. I’m actually trying to cut back a little on my meat intake (although I get crazy cravings for it).
Recently I reread the article by Gloria Steinem about her time working in the Playboy Club. It was so interesting, and so depressing that these clubs are starting to come back into popularity.
As a vegetarian, I often notice that men see vegetarianism as a threat to their masculinity. They act as if their balls would fall right off if they didn’t cram down as much meat as possible. It’s bizarre and annoying.
It’s related, but offtopic, but Glenn Sacks has a similar take on ads that demean men, and fathers. He has a campaign right now to convince Volvo to award their next ad campaign to a father friendly advertising shop, and not to their current ad shop that makes ads that demean people particularly fathers.
Calling attention to demeaning advertising could be an area in which feminists and fathers rights activists find common ground, and work together.
What do you think?
What might be a really powerful form of synergy is if Glenn’s letter writing campaign to Volvo were to include letters from women and especially from feminists.
Women : meat, Fathers : dumb, I mean this demeans all of us.
Maybe you can help?