>From the "only in America" department:
***** Fat flap
Firebrand activists PETA has enraged a surprising group -- fellow activists
by J. Caleb Mozzocco
People For the Ethical Treatment of Animals is being called to task for a new campaign, but not by the big corporations or high-end clothes designers the activist group usually targets. This time around, PETA is being criticized by fellow activists-fat-positive activists.
When PETA launched its America's Fattest Cities campaign several weeks ago, it was met with a sigh from Devra Polack, a former PETA supporter and current size-acceptance activist. Polack believes PETA has shown a pattern of fat-phobia, and its marketing alienates some supporters while trying to pull in new ones.
The group's campaign was inspired by a February Men's Fitness magazine article, which listed Columbus as number five on a top-10 list of the most fat and least fit U.S. cities. PETA sent special veggie starter kits to restaurants in all 10 cities on the Men's Fitness list, including vegetarian recipes, cooking suggestions, and advice on how to make their menus healthier and more animal friendly.
Sean Gifford, a vegan campaign coordinator for PETA, said the kits were sent to 20 to 30 locally owned, sit-down restaurants in Columbus' downtown area.
"Columbus is the birthplace of Wendy's and White Castle, which aren't famous for their healthy vegetarian food," Gifford said. "We'd like to keep Columbus completely off the [fattest cities] list next year."
PETA's behind-the-scenes networking with restaurants is accompanied by a media campaign consisting of a Los Angeles billboard, fliers in New York City and nationwide magazine ads. In each, a "woman" (actuality it's Lipsynka, a New York drag queen) seems to be screaming the slogan "I hate men's guts!" Below the quote, the ads read, "Thick around the middle? Go vegetarian."
Gifford said the quit-eating-meat, lose-weight rhetoric is only one of several strategies PETA employs to encourage people to go vegetarian.
"There are a number of studies on the subject," Gifford explained. "On average, vegetarians are 20 to 30 pounds leaner than their meat-eating counterparts. If you go vegetarian, you will lose weight and you will have more energy."
But fat-positive activist Polack believes the animal rights group should start treating overweight Americans a little more ethically.
"Their campaign denies the existence of fat vegetarians, and that's insulting and untrue," Polack said. "God, I know so many fat vegetarians."
Polack, 32, a web designer and developer based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, abstains from most meats (she continues to eat fish) and is very active in the size-acceptance community. A founding editor of FaT GiRL: The Zine For Fat Dykes and the Women Who Want Them, Polack speaks at bookstores and colleges about size acceptance and was more than a little dismayed to see the return of PETA's stop-eating-meat-and-lose-weight strategy.
"PETA is glomming onto our diet-obsessed culture, which is very popular to do," Polack said. "At least they're not condoning starvation like many diets, but they are buying into the same message -- you are not fine the way you are."
Polack said she and three of her friends quit supporting PETA several years ago when the organization used a picture of a fat man eating a hamburger on a billboard. When she called PETA to complain, Polack said she was told it was merely meant to be a symbol of corporate greed.
With the new version of the old "I hate men's guts!" campaign, Polack felt like the concerns she voiced were being ignored and mocked. She believes she's not the only one. As a web designer, she spends a lot of time on the Internet and said she's found lots of rancor toward PETA on other size-acceptance sites.
"A lot of what they [PETA] do is very important and they support a lot of worthwhile causes, but they're preying off people's fears of being fat," Polack said.
Diana Lee, managing editor of NOLOSE News (a publication of the National Organization for Lesbians of Size), believes the PETA campaign is based on two major fallacies. First, that someone can lose weight by eating high-fat vegetable protein instead of high-fat animal protein, and secondly that people need to lose weight.
"PETA is making the judgment that there is something wrong with being fat, that it is a condition to be avoided at any cost," Lee said. "Those of us in the fat-acceptance movement feel that being fat is simply a different kind of diversity, like having brown hair or blue eyes. There is a genetic basis to our shape, and we are very tired of being told that our fatness is a disease or some way morally wrong."
Gifford said there hasn't been a backlash from PETA's supporters over the current campaign. "It's all backed up by science," he said.
Ritchie Laymon, a member of the local animal rights group Protect Our Earth's Treasures, knows it isn't easy being overweight in America, but she doesn't begrudge PETA for the strategy, nor do any of her fellow POET activists to her knowledge.
"PETA is doing what just about everyone else does to sell a car or an idea -- marketing and advertising," Laymon said. "Sometimes the means to an end can be viewed by some as just plain mean. But when you weigh hurt feelings versus slit throats [of animals], the hurt-feelings argument comes up short."
July 5, 2001
Copyright © 2001 Columbus Alive, Inc. All rights reserved.
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Yoshie