PETA's "I’d Rather Go Naked than Wear Fur" Campaign: Promoting The Male Gaze?

This week’s reading in Practices of Looking discussed spectatorship and the theory of the gaze. In particular, I found the theory of the male gaze interesting and of significant relevance to the advertisements that appear in today’s media platform. In general, the gaze is the notion that when you look at an object, you are seeing more than just the thing itself but rather, you are seeing the relation between the thing and yourself. When someone puts paint on a canvas or captures a photograph, they are replicating a sight. I turn, an image is formed and a spectator can stand facing that image and look at the objects depicted. The image of the nude or nearly nude female is a prevalent image in our society. Actresses and models are depicted as reclining, helpless, and often being physically dominated by a male. In turn, men see these women under his gaze of possession – he is admiring her as an object of his desire in his domain.

When we learned about this theory, I thought of PETA’s “I’d Rather Go Naked than Wear Fur” campaign. PETA uses an interesting tactic: displaying nude and semi-nude attractive celebrities to pose for billboard photos. Supermodels such as Christy Turlington, actresses such as Eva Mendes, and reality stars such as Kim Khardashian, have posed naked on billboards with the slogan “I'd Rather Go Naked than Wear Fur” featured across their chests. Unfortunately, these people are nearly always women (they have a few men featured in these ads compared to an overwhelming number of women) and these women always fit society’s limited and rigid construction of beauty; celebrities starring in these advertisements are always skinny and fit society’s mold of what is deemed beautiful. These women are therefore considered sexy enough for the male gaze’s eye.

What’s troubling to me is that PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), is an animal rights organization, fighting for just treatment of animals and campaigning against the killing of animals, yet they use tactics in their advertising campaigns to exploit women. I’m a broken record already – women are being objectified everywhere. Granted, they’re fighting for animals and not people, but regardless, they are an organization fighting against maltreatment of living and breathing organisms.