Hi everyone and welcome back to my blog!

This week I wanted to talk about the objectification and sexualization of women and animals. I have chosen three images from an online source to show this objectification of women and animals and inserted them below.

This first image is of a female cow who is posed in a seductive manner, has an unnatural shape to her body, and is shown with a measuring tape around the waist, likely from a Weight Watcher or Skinny Cow advertisement (both real companies). This image implies that this is what a ‘sexy’ women/animal should look like, skinny and pretty.

This next image is of a female pig dressed in revealing clothes and posed in a seductive manner, pointing to the slogan, “Best Butts in Georgia”. This image implies that this particular restaurant has the best pork rinds in town, but they are targeting towards a male audience with this over-sexualized image of the female pig.

This next image I chose is of yet another female pig in revealing clothes and posed in a seductive manner, one of which is the famous Marilyn Monroe pose where her dress was being blown upwards from the wind, which got world-famous (mostly by men) due to its over-sexualized nature. This advertisement is likely in front of a store front for meat, or even dresses.

This last image I found was this advertisement for burgers with Paris Hilton, a very famous female model, dressed in lingerie eating a burger with the slogan, “she’ll tell you size doesn’t matter. She’s lying” which is a very obvious sexual innuendo. This advertisement is obviously targeted towards men and the restaurant wants to attract these men with the image of Paris Hilton. This same thing happens with car advertisements. I would like to pull a quote from Carol Adams, author of “The Pornography of Meat” where she talks about the objectification of women in advertisements and, “she goes on to state that some readers “may feel aroused” while others “will feel distaste”. I for one feel distaste when looking at this advertisement, but some men might feel aroused by it, and feel intrigued to try the burger that Paris Hilton is eating.

When viewing these images I asked myself, what do we learn about the objectification of women/animals? After viewing the images, it is clear to me that almost every advertisement we see today is targeted towards a male audience, and women and animals are objectified by how we are supposed to look and act to appear attractive to that audience. For example, how many times do you see an advertisement with a man who is being sexualized for a female audience? Almost never. After reading an interview by, Carol Adams, she states that both women and animals are just consumables to most men and that, “Animals are assumed to want it like women. One can consume either a pig or a woman. One can exploit and destroy a calf or a woman. Because women are not being depicted, no one is seen as being harmed and so no one has to be accountable. Everyone can enjoy the degradation of women without being honest about it.”, meaning that a pig and a women have the same sexual desires and are assumed to want the same things. While reading this interview I asked myself, who is “consumed” and who is the “consumer”? Well that is pretty simple, women and animals are the consumed, and men are the consumers. Now, I do not believe that it is only white men who are the consumers, which seems to be the target audience Adams thinks all of these advertisements are for. I believe it is ALL men who are the consumers, and for her to say that it is only white men being the consumers, is quite racist in my opinion. Any man can objectify a female, and the color of skin has nothing to do with it.