Misogyny and Misery on the Menu

Matthew Jeane

Imagine you are in the Netherlands and find yourself driving behind a transport truck for pigs. For most pigs in transport, this is their first time outside. They are being moved from one place of captivity to another—their final destination. On the truck, they receive neither water nor food. You see one plaintive snout sticking out from the truck. In your car, you might begin to think: What is it like for them, penned up inside? But then you see the image on the back, a pig, languorously stretched out, sexually posed; breasts and a plump rear grab your attention. And your visual senses say, “That’s funny,” distracting you from what is inside. The image is a mask, re-presenting what is happening to the animals inside the transport truck. The visual cues announce that what is happening to the pigs is okay. In fact, they suggest the animals like it; they want you to consume them.

Chickens don’t fare any better. For more than twenty years, “Rosie the Original Organic Chicken,” in her red high heels, necklace, and hat, has proclaimed her “organic” nature to consumers in California. She, too, wants to be consumed. As does “Cackalack’s Hot Chicken”. There she is: wearing high heels, stockings, and a bustier. She poses seductively, her eyes meeting yours. “Come and get me,” she invites. “Come and eat me,” she means. A similar image advertised “Fred’s Chicken” in Turkey, a chicken with her rump plumb in the center of your view, eyelashes curled, breasts jutting out, inviting the viewer to come and eat. In Israel, a cartoon showed a man in a car, pulling over to the sidewalk, calling out to a chicken with a purse and curled eyelashes, saying in Hebrew, “What’s up Kapara? Do you want to go out with me to a round?”

Seeing is Believing

We don’t realize that the act of viewing another as an object and the act of believing that another is an object are actually different acts, because our culture has collapsed them into one. Through images, misery is made sexy. Advertisements and other representations are never only about the product they are promoting. They are also about how our culture is structured, what we believe about ourselves and others. Advertisements appeal to someone to buy something. In this, they offer a window into the myths by which our world is structured. Ads advance someone over something. All of these images, and a panoply of others, accept the sexualized object status of women while presenting the consumable nature of domesticated animals.

In these advertisements and images, farmed animals who are actually in bondage are shown “free,” free in the way that “sexy” women have been depicted as free—posed as sexually available, as though their only desire is for the viewer to want their bodies. Sometimes the images show a hybrid woman/animal wanting to be consumed. In Italy, a restaurant’s ad depicted two beings in bed: a human man with his arm around a woman’s body with a cow’s head. Osteria La Capannina removed their Amanti della Carne (Meatlovers) ad after protests that it was sexist.

Barbecues often present a hybrid woman/pig desiring consumption. These images and advertisements, such as one selling the “Best Butts in Georgia” collapse the ideas of consumption and consummation. With the images, what you see is what you get—visual and literal consumption of the “full-bodied” female body.

A “bum burger” advertisement in 2013 in Australia showed a woman’s rear end as buns for a hamburger and was challenged for being sexist. The Advertising Standards Bureau Case Report summarized the problem: “The advertisement features a woman lying on the beach in a bikini. The photo is focused on her bottom which has the contents of a burger including lettuce, tomato, cheese, and a meat patty between the cheeks of her backside. The text reads: ‘Goodtime Burgers’ and ‘The freshest fun between the buns.’ ”

One of the complaints explained...