PETA Asia Pacific’s recent marketing campaign, which attempts to persuade meat-eaters towards vegetarianism by flaunting fully-undressed supermodels, reminds me of something Jacques Derrida talked about in his seminars on cannibalism: that carnivorous desire is exchangeable with carnal drive.
He says, “vegetarians, like everyone else, can also incorporate, symbolically, something living, something of flesh and blood... if they love, for it is the very temptation of love.” And so to follow the psychoanalytical logic of the undersexed older white male, vegetarians are hence, amazing in bed, because they sublimate their desire for meat into a desire for, well, meat. More fieldwork can only validate this old wife’s tale.
Truly, between Sophie Monk and a medium-rare porterhouse steak, I know what I’d rather sink my teeth into. And so the mantra “sex sells” is really finding a psychosexually suitable place in the anti-flesh industry. PETA is even having a Sexiest Vegetarian Next Door contest! So forget all the feminist objections to the objectification of the female body: we’re doing it for fluffy.
But as The Writer in Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker says: “My conscience wants vegetarianism to win over the world. And my subconscious is yearning for a piece of juicy meat. But what do I want?”
Can't I have my steak and eat it?
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