viz.

I’m wondering why the debate over meat-eating and the treatment of animals keeps happening on women’s bodies. This newest addition to the controversy happened on America’s Next Top Model when the contestants were taken to New York’s meat-packing district where they participated in a photo-shoot dressed in various articles of clothing made out of raw meat.

There has been quite a hubbub in response to the episode which aired last week, and it’s not really clear what message Tyra Banks and company were trying to send. PETA’s official statement in response to the episode basically says that they think using raw meat glamorizes the violence and torture of animals. They wish that America’s Next Top Model had dressed their girls up in veggies just like Pamela Anderson did for their ads. A blogger at www.grist.org , an environmentalist blog, thought the images might wake people up to the fact that meat actually comes from somewhere--it doesn’t always look like a pre-packaged hockey puck that waits for you at the grocery store.

Tyra may not have been trying to send any message regarding eating meat. The meat theme is probably a sign that they’re running out of absurd photo-shoot ideas, which is really what the show is based on. However, this would be perfect fodder for Carol J. Adams who looks at how animals-as-food and women are objectified in a very similar way. They are both something to be consumed and something that is asking for that consumption and objectification. I think she’d find that these images illustrate her point beautifully in that both the meat and the women are objectified simultaneously in a way that is very unapologetic about portraying women as purely seductive beings and meat as something to be consumed and butchered.