Are Animal Crackers Vegan?

Dating back to 1902, Barnum's animal crackers have been an American classic for generations. The original boxes came with a string and cardboard wheels so that the bears, elephants, lions, and tigers painted behind bars could be carried about by children encouraged to take on the role of ringleader. The animals were often shown vicious, wild, exciting, and in need of control. The cages separating the consumer from the wild beasts within were necessary and clearly defined.

In Our Children and Other Animals (2014), Matthew Cole and Kate Stewart argue that children's toys, media, and other products are carefully constructed to capitalize on children's interest in other animals, while also teaching them speciesism and dominance. To accomplish this, the violence inherent to speciesism is presented as unexceptional or erased altogether to the effect of normalizing human supremacy.

In support of this socialization process, the "wildness" of other animals may be emphasized to teach children that violent relationships with other animals is "natural," as is human dominance. However, oppression is increasingly framed as consensual, rather than forced. This approach surfaces is in Barnum's packaging today.

Gone are the angry, caged animals requiring harsh control. Today's box features sentimental images of animal families. This is a soft control. The bars become faint and fall into the background. Children can now imagine that the animals are there of their own will, their oppression desired and mutually beneficial. This ideology of consensual, happy, and willing participation is perhaps the most powerful in support of speciesism. It is not only circus animals who are reframed in this way, but other "zoo" animals. Over 50 species have been imprisoned in Barnum's cardboard railroad cars since 1902.

Some of the newer special editions show no bar enclosure at all. The animals are still controlled, boxed or within a snow globe, but the child is encouraged to understand this control as benevolent.

Are animal crackers vegan? While Nabisco's recipe is free of animal ingredients, Cole & Stewart's sociological analysis would suggest that consuming animal crackers is ritualistically anti-vegan, as it socializes speciesist sentiments and human supremacy in children. The work of vegan feminist Carol Adams supports this position, theorizing that Nonhuman Animals are routinely represented as willing, happy participants in order to repackage their consumption as something pleasurable, fun, and natural.

In the 1990s, Nabisco ran limited edition packaging that featured endangered species to raise awareness and funds, but even this intent to help was human-centered. Said the Nabisco product manager in a story with The New York Times:

What do people like about animal crackers? Biting off the heads! Our hope was that children will line them up, match them up with the names on the box, learn about them and then decapitate them.

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Dr. Corey Wrenn is a professor of Sociology specializing in the political structure of the Nonhuman Animal rights movement. She is founder of the Vegan Feminist Network and author of A Rational Approach to Animal Rights: Extensions in Abolitionist Theory (Palgrave 2016).

Pointlessly Gendering Cats and Dogs

Last December in Aldi (an Irish grocery chain), my partner and I were looking for a Christmas present for his dog. While sifting through the pet section, we noticed that perhaps it was a good thing his dog isn't female, because the only doggy stockings for sale were for male dogs. 

According to Armitage Pet Care ("The largest independent manufacturer and distributor of branded pet accessories and treats in the UK"), kitty treats are for "good girls" and doggy treats are for "good boys." The cat and dog caricatures and packaging colors appear to be gender neutral, but the labels are unnecessarily gendered. Upon further investigation, the gendering process extends beyond Santa's workshop: "Good Boy" applies to their entire line of canine treats, and "Good Girl" refers to their line of feline treats. What's more, this gender assignment is presumed to be implicit. The Armitage website does not clarify which product line refers to which species.

Here, the gendered identity of companion animals is taken for granted

Sociologists have noted that humans tend to transfer their gender role expectations onto nonhumans (and nonhumans also become extensions of human gender expressions). Dogs tend to be masculinized; cats tend to be feminized. Regardless of the animal's actual sex, they will be socialized according to the gender of their owner. My brother's pit bull is female, for example, but she plays rough and rowdy. She practically jumps off the walls because of how my brother has socialized her and how he engages play with her (as other pit bull guardians can attest, many pits are quiet and gentle). We also know that that many men are hesitant to have their male companion animals spayed for fear of emasculating them (a serious problem given the high death rates in kill shelters for discarded and homeless animals). Gender may be socially constructed, but its consequences are real indeed.

Dr. Lisa Wade of Sociological Images regularly deconstructs "unnecessarily" or "pointlessly" gendered cultural artifacts on the website and its corresponding Pinterest page to demonstrate how powerful gender roles are on the social imagination. Of course, gendering products is not "pointless." This action has a very intentional social purpose: to maintain and reproduce difference (which, in turn, maintains and reproduces social inequality). Nonhuman bodies are often politicized in the process, becoming representations of human stratification.

In many cases, the aggravation of these differences is much more conscious because it also serves to increase consumption. A heterosexual couple can't just share body wash, for instance. He has to have the forest-scented, blue soap in the black bottle labeled "For men;" she has to have the pink strawberry soap in the flowery bottle. Not surprisingly, there is often a feminine tax as well, with women's products costing more than equivalent products for men. As sociologists understand the economic sphere to be the origin of social structure (and inequality), it is no surprise to see such heavy representation of difference in the marketplace.

My male cat is not going to care either way if he is a good "boy" or "girl" as long as he gets his paws on that catnip. My partner's dog probably doesn't care if he is a good "doggy" or a good "kitty" either, and would gladly chomp down on anything and everything in the "Good Girl Christmas Cat Stocking." In the end, we settled on a gender neutral (and, subsequently, a much less annoying) chew toy.

References

Adams, C. and J. Donovan. 1995. Animals and Women: Feminist Theoretical Explorations. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Ramirez, M. 2006. "'My Dog's Just Like Me': Dog Ownership as a Gender Display." Symbolic Interaction 29 (3): 373-391.

One Gorilla, Two Gorillas, Three Gorillas, Four. Gorillas are for laughs? Or to abhor?

Hollywood has fed an unforgettable image of gorillas to audiences of King Kong for generations.

Zoos display gorillas in both live exhibits and as climbable statues.

Environmental stewardship organizations present the amber-eyed faces of gorillas with pleas for support.

A life-size concrete gorilla (undoubtedly with a backstory) even stands at the corner of an Arby’s parking lot in Madison, Wisconsin.   

The gorilla image is also used to sell products from glue to horticultural tents (both emphasizing strength and toughness), and from children’s cereal to candy bars.  Of these last two, the former – a mural-like rendering of an adult gorilla seated behind a photographed bowl of EnviroKids Organic Gorilla Munch – has experienced its own popularity as an Internet meme with iterations of the phrase, “That really rustled my jimmies.”  The latter gorilla image comes from a 2007 commercial for Cadbury’s Dairy Milk chocolate and features a male actor in a gorilla suit.

With appearances in these various places, products, and representations, how are we to know what a gorilla is…  A vehicle of entertainment?  A messenger for conservation?  A mascot, and if so, to be feared or endeared?

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Janine Benyus reflects upon historical presentations of gorillas in her recently published book The Secret Language of Animals: A Guide to Remarkable Behavior.  She writes:

Don’t you wonder how anyone could have portrayed this peaceable animal

as “nature’s most savage beast” for so many years?  The answer, of course, was in the profits.  Circuses that housed a “dangerous killer” drew record crowds...  As a result, fears and myths about gorillas became embedded in our culture.

History has shown that gorillas need not be present for audiences to find “them” amusing.  Enter the infamous man-in-a-gorilla-suit.  Whether at a circus, like the one shown below in Calcutta, or in advertisement, like Cadbury’s Phil Collins mimic, gorilla antics – even of human invention – are fair game for derision. 

Despite laughter and media playfulness surrounding gorilla images, it seems the “savage beast” representation endures most strongly.  “Not too long ago,” Beynus adds, “a survey taken among British schoolchildren showed that gorillas ranked right up there with snakes and rats as the kids’ most hated animals.”

Does hating this mostly vegetarian, sociable, intelligent, curious being cause us any conflict?  
Or can we separate the Kong and gorilla-suits from true gorillaness?

SOURCES

Literature
Benyus, Janine M. (2014). The Secret Language of Animals. Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, Inc.
New York. 

Images
1.  serkis.com
2.  Brookfield Zoo (the author's)
3.  Madison, WI (the author's)
4. ourgreenhome.ca
5. Gorilla grow tent poster (the author's)
6.  Cadbury's Gorilla video on YouTube (screenshot by the author)
7.  Mark, Mary Ellen. (2014). "Plate 86: Twin brothers Tulsi and Basant, Great Famous Circus, Calcutta, India, 1989."  Man and Beast, Photographs from Mexico and India. University of Texas Press
8. orvis.com

STK Open Call: Exploring Species-Gender Intersections in DC Steakhouse

A new steakhouse  has opened in Washington, DC that relies heavily on sexualized women to glamorize animal flesh as sexy, trendy, edgy, and available.  Many of the photographs used to promote the restaurant utilize thin, young, and mostly white female models.  This is done to create a sense of pleasurable consumption. As Carol Adams has argued--sex and animal foods are often overlapped to give an impression to the privileged consumer that the products of oppression are given freely and happily. Just as patriarchy convinces us that women really want it (sex, rape, violence, humiliation, etc.), it also convinces us that other feminized bodies really want this violation, too. Indeed, this fetishization becomes marketable.

Unfortunately, what this means for women and animals is that the violence enacted against them is sexualized, romanticized, and normalized. Notice the disembodied woman in high heels with a meat cleaver--extreme violence is being associated with sexual desire. Given the epidemic levels of violence against women, this should be serious cause for concern. As for Nonhuman Animals, like the woman in this image, they are fragmented and only made visible in consumable pieces of chopped up flesh.  These images want us to stay focused on meat; they don't want us thinking about the woman or cow they were attached to. That isn't sexy--that makes us think, and thinking interferes with sales.

Customers can come to STK to get their meat served up pretty. The website is careful to frequently juxtapose human meat with nonhuman meat. Human and nonhuman bodies are presented as interchangeable, fragmented, and completely and utterly objectified.

Models hired to promote the restaurant are literally branded with the store logo, marked as STK property as cows are in the feedlots of STK suppliers.  Again, this logo is quite indicative of the close association between the oppression of women and other animals. With a pouty lipsticked kiss, the mass murder of Nonhuman Animals and the objectification of women is made flirty and sexy.

Sexualized women routinely show up in STK adverts as well, even when they have nothing to do whatsoever with the product. Notice there are not even any pictures of food or drinks in the Apple Pie Day advertisement. In the happy hour advert, it is suggested that female customers at STK drink booze in positions of sexual availability (the mixing of alcohol with the sexual availability of women, incidentally, is the symboblic language of rape culture).  Women are used as signifiers:  Enact your privilege here.

A sexualized woman is even used to sell dead animal parts for charity. Ironically, the charity, UNICEF, is concerned with childhood hunger...and the Western animal-based diet that STK satiates is one reason why this hunger exists. Third world nations are often left unable to provide food for their own inhabitants, as much of the food they grow is used as feed for those Nonhuman Animals destined for Western consumption.  The violence enacted on these colonized peoples, like that which is enacted on women and Nonhuman Animals, remains largely invisible behind the glamour of youth, beauty, sex, and money whipped up in STK campaigning.

The vegan-feminist critique featured in this essay is based on the work of Carol Adams.  Thanks to Ivy Collier for bringing this steakhouse ad campaign to my attention.

The Sexual Politics of Vegan Food

Carol Adams has written extensively on the sexual politics of meat, arguing that women and other animals are both sexualized and commodified to facilitate their consumption (both figuratively and literally) by those in power. One result has been the feminization of veganism and vegetarianism.  This has the effect of delegitimizing, devaluing, and defanging veganism as a social movement.

But this process works within the vegan movement as well, with an open embracing of veganism as inherently feminized and sexualized.  This works to undermine a movement (that is comprised mostly of women) and repackage it for a patriarchal society.  Instead of strong, political collective of women, we have yet another demographic of sexually available individual women who exist for male consumption.

Take a browse through vegan cookbooks on Amazon, and the theme of “sexy veganism” that emerges is unmistakable.

Oftentimes, veganism is presented as a means of achieving idealized body types.  These books are mostly geared to a female audience, as society values women primarily as sexual resources for men, and women have internalized these gender norms.  Many of these books bank on the power of thin privilege, sizism, and stereotypes about female competition for male attention to shame women into purchasing.

To reach a male audience, however, authors have to draw on a notion of “authentic masculinity” to make a highly feminized concept palatable to a patriarchal society where all that is feminine is scorned.  Some have referred to this trend as “heganism.”  The idea is to protect male superiority by unnecessarily gendering veganism into veganism for girls and veganism for boys.  For the boys, authors have to appeal to “real” manhood. Thankfully Meat Is For Pussies (A How-to Guide for Dudes Who Want to Get Fit, Kick Ass and Take Names) appears to be out of print.

The vegan movement also favors the tactic of turning women into consumable objects in the exact same way that meat industries do.  Hardee's might have nearly naked women writhing on automobiles with dripping hamburgers, but vegan organizations mimic this by recruiting “lettuce ladies” or “cabbage chicks” dressed as vegetables to interact with the public.  PETA routinely has nude women pose in and among vegetables to convey the idea that women are sexy food.  Vegan pinup sites and strip joints also feed into this notion.  It is the co-optation and erosion of what is essentially a women’s movement.  Instead of empowering women on behalf of animals, these approaches could be disempowering women by preserving a patriarchal framework.

Media, Power, Social Change, and the Feline Absent Referent

My colleague Cheryl Abbate who is a graduate student of philosophy and animal ethics at Marquette University in Wisconsin shared this bizarre news story with me (please click to watch the video).  PETA paid for a somewhat graphic image of a cat undergoing medical experimentation to be posted on buses to raise awareness about Nonhuman Animal testing at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.  In the clip, the news station frames the story as a question of obscene imagery and First Amendment rights.  The newscaster, the bus management, and the public are all presented questioning PETA's legal ability to post the imagery publicly.  Never once is the animal testing actually discussed.

Really, the image isn't even that graphic compared to the scads of absolutely horrific, keep-you-up-at-night, scar-you-for-life, secondary post traumatic stress disorder-inducing imagery that is out there (I just returned from a research trip to the Tom Regan Animal Rights Archive and I'm still trying to recover from the images I saw).  But why has the news story focused only on the First Amendment when the big elephant in the room (or suffering orange cat in this case) is staring us right in the face?

If the viewers relied solely on what the news story presented, they'd never even know there was a problem with the systematic torture and killing of cats in their community.  The university's violence against Nonhuman Animals is completely ignored.  Instead, attention is drawn to the  violence to those humans made uncomfortable by the image or those worried about harm to their business.  An attempt to raise awareness about the interests of the vulnerable has been manipulated as a story about the interests of the privileged.

Research has demonstrated that vegan rhetoric is often distorted by mainstream elite-controlled media to either defame and dismiss veganism, or twist animal-positive ideas to support the status quo.  The media is an agent of socialization created and maintained by those in power.  In this case, the multi-billion dollar science industry and the large university get the privilege to shape reality.  These entities not only hold tremendous sway over the community, but they have also infiltrated the institution of media itself.  As we know, the media is run by powerful white men and their corporate interests.

Indeed, many social movement scholars question the ability for social movements to successfully utilize the media to disseminate messages of radical social change and equality.  On the other hand, the power of morally shocking imagery was also demonstrated.  Many concerned citizens have been contacting the university with complaints.  Fortunately, the news team and others working to maintain the existing power structure can't follow the buses around and try to deflect everyone's attention from Nonhuman Animal rights to First Amendment rights.

References

Cole, M. and K. Morgan.  2011.  "Veganphobia:  Derogatory Discourses of Veganism and the Reproduction of Speciesism in UK National Newspapers."  The British Journal of Sociology 62 (1):  134-153.

Freeman, C.  2009.  "This Little Piggy Went to Press;  The American News Media's Construction of Animals in Agriculture."  The Communication Review 12 (1):  78-103.

Sampedro, V.  1997.  "The Media Politics of Social Protest."  Mobilization 2 (2):  1985-205.

Marketing Meat

These vintage advertisements for meat all come from the American Meat Institute (via Buzzfeed). The first one is fascinating because of its headline: "This is Life."

It's not, really. It's death. (To be technical about it, it's a piece of a rib of a dead cow.)

Sure, children need amino acids to grow, just as the ad says (that's where the "life" from the ad comes in). But what the ad doesn't say is that children can get same those amino acids from a variety of plant foods, and don't need meat to get them. Meat really isn't life, and to construct it as such is almost Orwellian in its use of doublespeak.

But the ad also has some interesting bits in the small print. Here you can see the clear link, demonstrated by Carol Adams, between meat and masculinity: it's not just "a symbol of man's desire," but when a woman cooks it, she can be proud of her meal.

The second ad also does two things. First, it suggests that America is literally "calling for more and more meat," as if the aforementioned American Meat Institute was not itself responsible for encouraging the public to eat meat. The AMI, founded in 1906, is America's oldest trade association, helping America's meat industry sell more meat; in the 1940s, they began advertising directly to the public via the ads that you see on this page. Today they do so via websites like MeatFuelsAmerica.com and MeatMythCrushers.com.

Second, the ad uses the term "crop" to refer to a greater-than-usual supply of pork available that year, as if pork--the flesh of pigs--is cultivated like wheat. While everyone knows that pigs are animals, and not plants, using language like this is a nifty way of covering up the fact that animals do have to be raised, not grown, and killed, before they can end up in the frying pan.

As we've learned from watching Mad Men, the best advertisers know how to use a combination of language and imagery to sell desire, and to encourage the public to buy products that we don't really need. You might even say, as in the case of these meat ads, that advertising sells lies, which the public buys as truth. Meat is Life. Pork is Wheat. No One Dies.