PETA: PURVEYORS OF EXCESSIVE TITS AND ASSES

You remember PETA, yes?  They’re the subjects of probably the angriest two posts I’ve written in almost two years of running this blog.  I called them the most vicious hypocrisy since the Catholic Church, and I stand by that.  If you want to read those two posts, here’s part 1 and part 2.  Anyway, in the beginning of that series, I mentioned that their ads were stupid and childish and that they create “controversial” ads so that no one will run them and then they can say they’re “banned” and then PETA can pretend to be a suppressed, rebellious voice in a world of meat-eating drones.  All of which is a lie.  Here’s another one.

You’ll notice that the title says “PETA’s Banned Sexy Go Veg Super Bowl 2011 Ad,” which is misleading because it implies that a) they made it for the Super Bowl, which they didn’t, b) they made it to be an ad, which they didn’t, and c) that someone took the effort to ban it, which they didn’t.  What this actually is is a series of cuts that they put together to look like this so it would resemble the rough cut or maybe casting call of a Super Bowl ad that would not, if it were real, get run.  Then they can call it “banned” and it goes semi-viral and the attention whores are happy.  This “ad” was never submitted, nor will it ever run anywhere.  It’s just an excuse for PETA’s horny art directors to watch women play with veggies.

There are so many aspects of this ad that make me angry, not just as an ad student but as a human being.

• Twenty seconds in, the director says “why don’t you pick a vegetable and show us how much you love it.”  I’ve heard less pathetic lines from the guy behind the camera in amateur POV porn.
• Twenty-six seconds in, the floozy holding a bunch of celery comments that it’s “a lot bigger than most men, actually.”  Well no shit, sweetheart.  It’s the size of your fucking thigh.  And that’s not an isolated incident, there are repeated references to the fact that most men do not have 15″ dicks.  You know what else does that?  TERRIBLE PORN.  “I’ve never seen one this big bef-” just shut the fuck up.
• Forty-six seconds in, the guys in the back reassure the model (if she is that) on the couch that she’s “not the only one” sweating.  That’s really reassuring, guys.  When I’m watching a scantily clad woman writhe awkwardly on a cheap couch with no music and an assortment of phallic vegetables, I pray that there are, in the room somewhere, a bunch of leering men, just watching.  Oh, and if they’re also sweaty?  Bonus.
• The token pudgy dude.  What the hell is he doing there?  I’m not mad that he’s ruining the women—there’s nothing to ruin—I’m mad because he’s a pathetic attempt to make them seem fun and laid-back, when everyone knows they’re not.  These are the people that shrink-wrap themselves in giant styrofoam meat containers to make a stupid statement about animal cruelty.  No one thinks of PETA and says, “oh, those super-chill vegetarians that don’t take anything too seriously?”  Cut it out.
• The end, for two reasons.  First, let’s look at this screenshot.

If it wasn’t insultingly obvious by this point that vegetables = penises, the nice lady at 1:02 clinches it.  I feel obligated to point out that this is STILL SHITTY PORN, wherein we watch more attractive women than we know doing things to us that the women we do know won’t do.  So now, maybe, we’ve been able to ignore the fat dude and start to get into this, imagining that we are the cucumber.  It’s a faily common ad strategy, though usually implemented better, that you don’t have to explain the benefits of the products if you make an atmosphere that’s appealing.  We want to be a part of whatever’s happening in that screenshot, doesn’t matter who makes it happen.  PETA?  Sure.  So what do they do with that pathetic fantasy?

They break your man-parts literally in half.  What the fuck?  Did you forget what the point of cucumbers was?  Did you forget that we’re supposed to like these women, not see them as harpies who will blow you, then gleefully snap your genitals off, all the while grinning like a deranged person?  There are six instances of the women actually eating the vegetables here, and I’ll be honest—it kinda ruins whatever sexy you hadn’t already destroyed.

Then they end on their usual copy, “Studies show that vegetarians have better sex.”  That is, again, a lie. PETA says that meat makes people “fat, sick, and boring in bed” (wrong, in my experience), that vegetarians are “on average, fitter and slimmer than meat eaters,” and that meat and dairy consumption is linked to impotence, heart disease, and obesity.  That’s partially true, but it’s mainly due to the fact that vegetarians tend to be more health-conscious.  I could find you a million examples of healthy meat-eaters, but it’s not even worth the effort.  And finally, Nina Shen Rastogi over at Slate writes the following:

Vegetarianism also may have some negative effects on sexual desire. Vegetarian diets tend to correlate with higher rates of zinc deficiency, which is closely associated with lower testosterone levels and depressed sex drives. Vegetarian women are also more likely to develop amenorrhea (loss of periods), a condition that’s usually accompanied by low testosterone, vaginal dryness, and poor libido. Finally, the notion that overweight people are less sexually active isn’t entirely accurate (for women, at least): A recent analysis published in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology shows that overweight women might, in fact, be slightly more active.

So please, PETA.  Leave us alone.