The Breast That Nourishes Man

Warning: Explicit Language Used

Marketing tactics always try their best to find a way to create an image that will best sell their products. For many restaurants and food advertisements, “women are animalized and animals are sexualized and feminized” (Adams 13).  Western culture has become so focused on the fetishization of women that they are not seen as actual, living, breathing humans. Like most animals, they are only seen as a piece of meat and something to abuse.

The female experience is being controlled by misogynistic “graphic and artistic depictions, men’s description of their violence against women, women’s description of their experience of sexual violence, the use of and harm to animals’ by batterers to create control over their sexual partner, and in advertisements and other discussions of meat as food” (Adams 13). Like animals in the meat industry, women are seen as an animal who only has one purpose: to reproduce and abuse until the oppressor decides they’ve done their duty. In an interview, ecofeminist Carol J. Adams suggests “that a cycle of objectification, fragmentation, and consumption links butchering and sexual violence in our culture” (13).

“Meat advertisements show us how pornographers do this: take a defeated being, in this case a dead animal, and pose him or her according to a pornographic convention, say, a restaurant that sells dead lobsters claiming ‘Nice tail;’ barbequed pigs posed as young women (all pink, signifying whiteness), hanging on the arms of men; anorexic cows; chickens in high heels. In each case: She is dead and yet she wants it. Wants what? Wants sex; wants to be sexually used; wants to be consumed” (Adams 15). The comparison between the meat and porn industries is astonishing. Before reading Adams interview, I never once realized how similar they are. Both are done for a male audience, to lure them to satisfy their hunger; whether literal or sexual.

To advertise a “Late Nite” menu, this restaurant made the choice to give the burger legs, covered in fishnet tights, and red heels. The sexualization of a burger is completely unnecessary, yet the decision was made to draw the sign in this manner to lure in the male audience. In addition to the image, there is a thought bubble that states “Eat Me”. This erotic statement only proves how the pornography industry is ever present in other aspects of our culture. The media often states how men fetishize female legs, and how they are used to get a mans attention. Usually in movies or television shows, a woman is sent to gain favor with a man because she ‘has better legs’; meaning she is about to ‘use her assets’ to distract the ‘dumb’ man and get what she wants.

This next image is absolutely disgusting. “Breast-aurant”. You’re fucking kidding, right? Hooters is one example of the most vile sexual exploitation and obscene control over women. As if the food industry wasn’t sexualized enough, you want women to wear uncomfortable bras to make their breasts look larger, skimpy shorts, and come from the kitchen with a mans food? I’m not knocking down anyone that works there. In a man’s world, it’s hard to find a job anywhere. All over the internet there are stories of women who have worked for Hooters, sharing just a few of the ways they were being controlled while working there. Twin Peaks is another restaurant that exploits women in the same manner. The one thing that really angers me about this article is the word choice. “Augment”? This is a very obvious dig at the establishment, suggesting it undergo changes to ‘enhance it’s features’, much like a women would during any type of plastic surgery. Typically these surgeries are only done to gain favor with a man, which is a bullshit standard in this patriarchal society.

This subject I feel strongly about because I genuinely despise how women have to subject themselves to this kind of patriarchal oppression. Like I had said before, I don’t want to knock down the women that do pursue this kind of work. What makes me sick is how the men who attend these establishments feel entitled to continue to sexualize and dehumanize these women. And it’s not just with white women. Lisa Kemmerer’s article analyzes the work of Adams and furthers her sentiment in stating “advertisements with African American women, revealing African Americans as more likely to be linked with animals and nature, available to white men, and insatiable”.

This post was likely meant to be humorous however, it only shows how women are animalized in this comparison. Thanksgiving itself is a holiday built upon the rape, destruction, murder, and oppression of indigenous nations; but that is different conversation for another time. In this lascivious comparison, both women and turkey are seen as an object of consumption for male pleasure. Here, women are not human. They are not people. They are a plaything, something to be exploited, used, then tossed aside like the bone of a turkey leg when all the meat is gone.

The #womennotobjects project was created  as a protest against the sexualization of women. While not all of the advertisements in this video are food related, the argument still stands. Women are exploited and used as props in advertisements of all kinds. From alcohol to food, to  high end products like Tom Ford and Marc Jacobs, women and their animal counterparts have been defiled in these advertisements.

As I was reading the materials this week and scouring the internet for more examples of this demeaning nature between women and meat, I found myself enraged. While writing this post, I felt physically sick. It’s fucking ridiculous. This can’t be the world that we live in.

As someone who practices a vegetarian lifestyle, I do my best to purchase dairy products from decent sources. I’ve contemplated switching to veganism but if I’m being honest, it’s really difficult. The joke I regularly make is that I like my cheese and ice cream too much. After reading Adams interview and learning more about these lewd advertisements I despise everything about the meat industry. Currently, I live with my boyfriend and his father (we’re saving to buy a house but that market sucks currently too) and it’s hard enough trying to keep to a vegetarian lifestyle with someone who doesn’t understand how another human just doesn’t eat meat. I’m not sure how to go about explaining veganism and how to make that switch without causing an argument with his father; someone who refuses to accept that there other lifestyles aside from his and not just speaking on the subject of food.

Women are not animals. Animals are not sexual objects. Food is necessary for survival, not something to sexualize. Women and animals are not something to be used to satiate male hunger.