What do a steaming plate of chicken and a sexy woman have in common?
Nothing, if you ask Carol Adams, author of "The Sexual Politics of Meat," but the media often portrays otherwise, she said.
In her slide show presentation Wednesday, Adams, a self-labeled "vegan, feminist agitator for peace," discussed the link between sexism and meat through advertisements, news articles and even children's homework. About 100 people attended the talk.
Adams, who has written over 100 articles and 20 books, said she feels "inequality is made sexy" in images depicting women as enticing meat entrées, such as a Gap T-shirt where a naked woman is drawn with butcher lines next to the caption, "What's your cut?"
"The images elicit the same snickers, the same jokes, except men don't have to admit they're putting women down," she said.
Some of the more graphic images in the slide show, such as a hanging row of disembodied cow heads in a meat-packing facility, elicited shocked moans from the audience.
Leah Goldberg, an agricultural and food science major at Santa Fe College, said she found a Louis Vuitton advertisement showing a woman's red-stiletto'd leg hanging from a rope around her ankle equally disturbing.
The image is disturbing because it depicts abuse to women as lighthearted in addition to likening the woman to a slab of meat, Adams said.
"I can't believe something like that is fashionable," Goldberg said.
William Bowers, an English professor at SFC, encouraged his students to attend Adams' presentation because it applied to many of the feminist and culinary themes studied throughout the semester.
"A lot of them are frustrated, but in a way that's interesting and healthy," Bowers said of his students after the presentation.
Adams said she encouraged the audience to stop eating animals and "stop consuming women," along with being more critical of the media and the underlying sexist ideas it may contain.
"Perhaps you, too, can see ads differently," she said.
