Fair warning, if you couldn’t tell from the title, today is a swearing ranty day. PETA is up to their old tricks, using fatphobia to try to convince people to become vegan.
This time it’s with a proposed ad that creates the optical illusion that a bus is tiling to the right because of a fat man with the slogan “Time to Go Vegan.”
Fuck you PETA.
First of all, I’m not excited about a campaign that tries to get what they believe is the ethical treatment of animals accomplished through the unethical treatment of fat people. Maybe they should change their name to PUTOFF (People for the Unethical Treatment of Fat Fatties) at least the acronym would be apt.
Also, I hate to break it to PETA, but a guy who looks the one in their picture could easily BE a vegan. There are fat vegans. And they are often treated horribly by the vegan community because of bullshit like this that suggests that a vegan diet will make everyone thin, that being thin should be the goal of a vegan diet, and that any vegan who is not thin is a “bad example” of veganism. If you really believe that being vegan is the right thing to do morally, then perhaps take a pass on creating a culture of shame, stigma, bullying and bigotry toward people who are doing what you believe is the right thing, because you don’t like the way they look.
PETA spokesman Ben Williamson told Creativity (where you can leave a comment by the way) that the ad is “a light-hearted way of putting across a life-saving message.” This is a stunningly clear example of why people who aren’t the targets of bigotry (including and especially those creating the bigotry) should not get to comment on the severity or likely effects of it.
I hope that the irony of using humor based on bigotry to forward what a group believes is a social justice issue is not lost on anyone. And I hope that PETA takes their fatphobic bullshit and fucks right the hell off.
EDIT! A note about comments: One of the things that I love most about this blog is how awesome the comments section is and how respectfully people generally disagree and stay on topic. That said, I know that food choices can be something that brings up a lot of emotions so a quick reminder that this is a space to talk about the Size Acceptance and Fat Activism, Health at Every Size etc., it is not a place to moralize about food, or shame anyone for their choices around food – even if you’re passionate about your beliefs, even if you’re certain that what you believe is right and what others believe is wrong. Those are conversations that you are absolutely allowed to have, you’re just not allowed to have them here. I ask that you please respect my request and don’t make me spend a bunch of time moderating comments. If you have questions you can check out this post and/or feel free to e-mail me at Ragen at danceswithfat dot org. I hope you understand. Thanks.
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