Women & Meat

In her landmark work “The Sexual Politics of Meat” Carol Adams describes the link between the oppression of women and the oppression of non-human animals. She points to the connection between meat eating and masculinity, and the way in which both dead animals and women are seen as things to be consumed. I didn’t 100% agree with her analysis (I am sure to the shock of nobody) but I do definitely find this true when it comes to advertising and often in political discourse. I have choosen some pictures to look at through this lens, and give some of my own thoughts on.

The first is a Brexit cartoon that presents Theresa May (who was prime minister of the UK at the time) as a pig. The way she can be identified is that her hair and pearls are presented. But also her trademark scowl. May is an unlikeable women (which makes her slightly more likeable to me). She is often presented in pictures with a less than pleasant look on her face. The fact alone that these are her three most noteworthy characteristics could be indicative as sexism in and of itself. Pig May is the largest pig in the cartoon, the next largest is a pig labelled BREXIT which appears to be aggressively suckiling Pig Mays teat. Around them are smaller pigs labelled Housing, NHS, Social Mobility, etc. The idea here is that because of all the focus BREXIT is getting, there are little resources left for these other programs. I personally favor BREXIT myself and don’t quite agree with the argument here. But that’s not important, what is, is that for some reason a seemingly left leaning cartoonist choose to present one of the most powerful women on the planet (and the only the second women to serve as UK prime minister) as a pig. Now you could easily make the argument that BREXIT is taking up too many resources but why present her as pig? It is hardly the only animal that suckles, in fact human babies do. I believe she was presented as a pig in order to present her as unattractive and unlikeable as possible, which makes it easier to hate her and her policies. Now that I don’t necessarily believe that the cartoonist did this purposely, but rather unconsciously choose a pig (especially since while trying to find a source for this cartoon, I came across countless identical ones). All that being said, it is worth noting that both May and pigs are associated with capitalism.

The next picture is a little cartoon mascot created for Skinnycow (which makes lowfat dairy products like cheese and cream). We always think of cows as big fat animals that give us milk and other such products, they are generally seen as a particularly cute animal, and in addition to making what many would consider gross noises, they also smell bad. So for this little cartoon the cow is presented in an anthropomorphic style and is at the very least borderline sexualized. It has a full face of makeup, breasts (I admit I didn’t notice the breasts at first, and it was my girlfriend who pointed them out to me), and is in a pin up pose. It is possible this is just done for humorous purposes, however I would say that this mascot is supposed to represent the transformative abilities of the product line. Fat women are called cows, and this cow is thin and sexy (I assure you that pained me to type).

Next I am looking at a billboard ad for the Dodge Durango. Which of course shows a picture of a red Dodge Durango, but that is not what is notable here, what I am paying attention to is the text which says “A big fat juicy cheeseburger in a land of Tofu”. There is a lot to unbox here. For starters who is the target audience here? I would say it is men, and particularly men that view themselves as masculine. Men that feel threatened by a world around them, in which it feels like American traditions like burgers and big trucks, are being replaced by plant based foods, and energy efficient cars. The argument here is that Dodge is doing something different by doing something traditional. The appeal here is similar to Donald Trump who promises to return to what made great great, the Dodge Durango isn’t going to make America great again, but it might just offer a slice of what was great about, much like a big fat cheeseburger does.

The last picture we will be looking at comes from a CNN article about the popular KETO. It’s a weird pick I know but I’m surrounded by people on KETO and its often on my mind. For those that are not aware KETO is a diet similar to atkins back in the day but more intense, it’s very low carb and for some people (like my girlfriends mother) means her buying literal Lard and adding it to basically every meal she eats. For some its a bit of a meat based diet. But because it is a fad diet, the main demographic is women so we see, typically male meat shown in a fem coded way. Yes we see meat and cheese, but it’s not grilled, melted, juicy, or any of the ways we see it with men, it’s classy and clean, which is how we expect women to be.