I'd Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur

"I'd Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur" Campaign

Above, you can see a variety of ads from the "I'd Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur Campaign." When looking at the ads in an intertextual scheme like this, it is easy to see that they have a lot in common. All feature nude women and although one has a nude man, Tony Gonzalez, his wife is sitting on his lap. In this ad, not only is the female body on display, a male is asserting power over the female body. For my analysis, I focus on the ad to the far right above, of the naked woman dancing because it is a good representation of the ways in which PETA uses women's bodies in this ad campaign.

This ad featuring Karina Smirnoff is captioned "I'd rather dance naked than wear fur," a play on the usual title of "I'd rather go naked." Smirnoff is a professional dancer who has appeared on several seasons of Dancing with the Stars. The ad shows Karina dressed in high heels, makeup, and jewelry but nothing else as she dances with a faceless half body of a man in a tuxedo. Karina looks towards the viewer of the ad but her body is facing towards her dance partner who we know can see what we can't: everything. Although the pair is supposed to be dancing, it also looks like he is moving, maybe even dragging her in his direction and off the page. According to Stankiewicz and Rosselli, Karina can be interpreted to be an objectified body because her sexuality is being used not to sell a product but to sell the message of animal rights, specifically abstaining from fur. She also fits the profile of object rather than subject because according to their criteria because she gives the camera a suggestive smirk and her body position is exaggerated to place emphasis on her legs, buttocks, and lower abdomen (583).

Stankiewicz and Rosselli argue that the use of women as sexual objects in print magazine advertisements is significant because "there is evidence that exposure to sexually objectifying advertisements produces anti-woman attitudes...[and] attitude[s] that women are valuable only as objects of men's desire, that real mean are always sexually aggressive" (581). Aggression is a topic that I will later address in the context of the "Ink Not Mink" campaign but it is important to consider the interpretation of aggression in this ad as well. It is significant that there is the faceless but clothed body of a man who is asserting power of Karina's body by moving it/moving with it and also by hiding her breasts from the audience, establishing that as a part of her that he can see but that we cannot see.

Like many other ads from this campaign and others, Karina typifies a very specific white, female, conventionally beautifully, and able-bodied woman (or object.) A common feminist critique of this embodiment of the female object is that it "engage[s] and perpetuate[s] a racialized, gendered, and ableist discourse of beauty...to achieve impossible standards of attractiveness to heterosexual men" (Deckha 50). Claims like this suggest that in using female bodies to draw attention to animal suffering, organizations like PETA are subliminally suggesting that women as objects can be substituted for the objectification of animals (Pace 33).

It is important to remember that this and all ads produce a polysemy of meanings and under some analysis, Karina's ad could be read as more liberating that oppressive. Joan Forbes argues that to some, with women's "increased sexual choice, expression, and freedom" there is "this 'progressive' tendency to associate sexuality with individual 'liberation'" (179). Some could argue that Karina's sexualized ad is an assertion of female sexual power. We also tend to assume that sexualized images of women are only seen through a voyeuristic male gaze that is inherently objectifying to women (Rose 121-122). Forbes reworks this tradition approach to voyerism to suggest that since there is an unavoidable "female spectatorship" that will view the ad, "'female gaze'" is created where women possess "the possibilities for female desire and pleasure within heterosexuality" (177).

The gendered positions present in Karina Smirnoff's ad are reversed in a 2007 "I'd rather go naked than wear fur" protest featuring Janice Dickinson. Photographic images of the protest that have circulated online show Dickinson slightly dressed in what appears to be sleepwear: a white tank top and panties. As a celebrity and supermodel, Dickinson became the face of the protest but she was surrounded young men and women also protesting with the same PETA signs. The other women all appear to be much younger than Janice and are dressed slightly more revealingly in bras. But it is the young men who bare all to prove that they would "rather go naked than wear fur." A particularly eye-catching image from the protest shows a young male model completely naked and cupping his genitals with his right hand while Janice places her hand over that hand. In this image, Janice Dickinson is asserting power over the man both by her clothed status to his unclothed status and her physical interaction with him. By Stankiewicz and Rosselli's classification, Dickinson is acting as an aggressor because she is "dominant over a man in a sexual act" through her physical contact with his body and also her clothed status to his nude status (584).
This may seem surprising given the social construction of gender that we are used to. Still, Dickinson has more social power than the man because she is older and a very wealthy supermodel and he is young and a model at her agency. A woman of Janice Dickinson's status can say "I'd rather go naked than wear fur" without really going naked while her male comrades cannot. Although this breaks gender norms, it still reinforces other power hierarchies perpetuating inequality.

Works Cited

Deckha, Maneesha. "Disturbing Images: Peta and the Feminist Ethics of Animal Advocacy." Ethics & the Environment 13.2 (2008): 35-76. Print.

Forbes, Joan S. "Disciplining Women in Contemporary Discourses of Sexuality." Journal of Gender Studies 5.2 (1996): 177-89. Print.

Pace, Lesli. "Image Events and PETA's Anti Fur Campaign." Women and Language 28.2 (2005): 33-41. Print.

Stankiewicz, Julie M., and Francine Rosselli. "Women as Sex Objects and Victims in Print Advertisements." Sex Roles 58.7-8 (2008): 579-89. Print.