An end to PETA's "Sexiest Vegan" competition… but…

I saw a really subtle indication in the
news today that peda People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals PETA huge well-funded international position I saw subtle indication that they may have finally heard the criticism of their t'east --less exploitation of the sex appeal of veganism that they've heard the criticism and responded to it by making their outreach and advertising program even worse here's what you may have missed even if you are following the vegan news on various websites maybe just don't read it or hear on youtube this year pedda put out a press release announcing Eva Duvernay and Benedict Cumberbatch as pet 'as most beautiful vegans now what's new about this how can this possibly be newsworthy or worth discussing don't they do some kind of tacky crass sexiest vegan award every six months or even more often it seems like every couple of months they find another excuse news in this here's here's the subtle difference you may have missed last year they were not the most beautiful vegan celebrities last year the award went to the sexiest vegan celebrities you notice you know it's the difference of wording just a couple of months ago on this same YouTube channel I made a short video it's one of my least popular videos nobody paid it much attention in which I pointed out that pet is sexiest vegan award it's not sexy anymore it has almost nothing to do with sex appeal in a very curious where I just went through the list of nominees now the winners were chosen it was kind of people competing on who had who had the best sob story who had the boast most tear-jerking account of all the different charities they support or how oppressed they are in terms of their own cultural background how they come from some kind of poverty-stricken ethnically disadvantaged background but nevertheless today volunteer in a church basement to feed starving people with one arm and one leg and teaching them how to do a square dance like really it was that bad it was like sorry this is a this is a beauty competition this is a beauty contest this is an award for sexiest vegan that's being awarded on the basis of GART area that have nothing to do with sex appeal and indeed just in looking through the photos you got one photograph of each of the contestants in the last the last competition I covered um most of them there wasn't even an attempt to make them look sexy like whether or not these people were objectively or subjectively sexy like the one photo you got was obviously not the most flattering it wasn't even attempted make the people exactly so at that time I threw up some screenshots but that was it I discussed it but this is the year this is the year 2018 were apparently petaa acknowledged my criticism and the criticism other thing I could say thousands of others and they dropped the word sexiest go to the title and replaced it with most beautiful and here's the tragic thing the result has been that they've made it even worse they they haven't solved the problem they haven't made it better they've made the problem worse now if you've been on the unit for a while I don't have a word for this phenomenon but I'm sure you've seen this again and again I can remember on tumblr the tumblr is a website text an image-based it's not not a video website you can post videos on there but at the time it was mostly some more like a written blog the website where people would share their thoughts and feelings about things and somebody put together a meme that showed a conventionally beautiful woman someone who was a bikini model and it showed a woman who was dying of some terrible affliction some disease that made her wither away but was smiling for the camera you know I don't know from some newspaper story about her terrible disease that's causing her to wither away and die and you know the woman who was ill you know she did I think she had no hair or and so on she was really a sort of a me seed it goes to a woman and there's this angry text below it saying you know if you don't think that these two people are equally beautiful then you're a terrible person you should be ashamed of yourself and telling people to repost and thumbs up and give the harder to give the like to this pose to show how much they agree with the idea that the people in these two photographs are equally beautiful so beautiful the word here is is beautiful now you know the Internet is a place that seems to both you know reward stupidity and encourage a kind of silent conformism of thought in these things but I actually saw some some substantive responses to this particular image this particular meme of people objecting and saying no let's let's stop and really think about what the word Beauty the word beautiful means why can't we just say why can't we just acknowledge you know yeah maybe beauty is shallow maybe it's skin deep maybe beauty is in the eye that beholder but beauty isn't moral value beauty isn't intellectual value beauty isn't a political judgment or a moral judgment or ethical judgment it's not any of these things if we're gonna talk about you who's beautiful here if we running given a word for who's beautiful value people people let's really face up to what beauty is let's stop trying to misrepresent beauty as morality I guess and really in this case the case of this particular meme names over the the morality of the person in the picture it's actually the the morality of the beholder so the person looking at the picture it's the morality of you you recognizing beauty so I remember that the controversy and obviously there was a kind of feminist social justice warrior reaction of this that no no we mustn't we mustn't acknowledge you know beauty is something different from from morality I suppose but to make a judgement that one person is more beautiful is you know allegedly from their perspective a deeply immoral thing Oh pedda people with the ethical Trudy manimals they've been in the business of judging who's sexiest and who's most beautiful for many many years and I really wonder why I doubt it's because they saw my video on my youtube channel why was it only now in 2017 that they were supposed sorry 2015 was the last year when they used the word sexiest why is only now in 2018 that they finally turned the corner and gotten rid of the word sexiest so last year I'm guessing they came to some kind of terrible indecisive you know judgment on this their finalists last year for the sexiest vegan celebrity included Swizz Beatz who's an MC associated with hip hop music Ricky Gervais is so Ricky Gervais I'm not hating on him nobody would nominate Ricky Gervais in a in a sexiest anything competition I'm not he's not ugly don't get me wrong he's a comedian and he's an entertainer but already there's there's kind of a difficult question what look some don't get me wrong people are gonna find Ricky Gervais is sexy there's a different lady for every pot but if you're having a beauty competition giving it whatever I mean what is the point of having a beauty competition it's so mind-numbingly stupid to begin with but given the premise that you're gonna have a most beautiful vegan competition or a sexiest vegan competition obviously the criteria here aren't really beauty or sex appeal when you're talking about people like Swizz Beatz and Ricky Gervais is on the male side and the winners in 2016 they apparently couldn't decide on who to give the award to so they split it three ways between Ruby Rose Jenna Dewan Tatum and Maggie Q Bazar and I mean look the Internet was invented apparently to agregate you know images that other human beings find sexy and appealing you can really easily and really rapidly now find examples of people of RZA and vegans specifically who've risen to public acclaim and public Fame because other people find the beautiful other people find them sexy and and this ain't it and now they've taken a step further in 2018 the word sexy is gone obviously some people are gonna find Ava Duvernay attractive some people can find Benedict Cumberbatch attractive don't get me wrong but the judgment being made on them here is obviously moral rather than aesthetic rather than having anything to do with beauty obviously they're making a political statement in claiming that Ava Duvernay is a beautiful person and get even the photographs they're using of her this is not the most flattering or most beautiful or most sexy photograph of her possible you could probably you know put together a photo shoot it looks at in this way um Benedict Cumberbatch is not the sexiest male vegan in the world he's not the sexiest you know cast member of the Avengers or whatever other crappy mainstream movies he's been in lately you know he's not rubbing on even the sexiest man to have played the role of dr. strange you know I'm sorry I can put up some really unflattering photographs of of who he is and what he looks like um in covering this look this is not news this is a story that I think is dying and I'm drawing your attention to it precisely because of its lack of relevance I've had a lot of discussion on my channel now and I've had a lot of gushing over the last four years about what is effective activism we are pretty much never going to be debating or criticizing a form of activism that has zero impact zero effect or zero outcome you can think of the worst and most embarrassing and most pathetic form of activism you can find on the Internet or in real life and I guarantee you if you look around you'll find someone who puts up their hand and says they converted to veganism because of it I personally find it both laughable and cringe-inducing to see John sack arse John sack ours as a musician notorious she was Asian John sack Cara's making one song after another about his sex life and how allegedly his sex life got so much better because he became vegan we all know it's not true if you just scroll through his training a little bit further you can find more honest videos we talked about how terrible his sex life is and how his whole life is falling apart since he became vegan interesting character but like the you know these awful videos from John cigars it would be very easy for someone to kind of jump to the conclusion oh this makes us look crazy it makes vegans look crazy this dis credits the movement this is bad for veganism this is ineffective activism this can't pause before everyone trust me I I guarantee I guarantee there were are people I know one person who loves the work of Trance a cars there may only be one I know one vegan activist who takes a lot of positive inspiration from what he does and I know there will be people out there who first got the concept of veganism even if they were laughing at it and not laughing with it from John sackers playing the guitar and wiggling his tongue around on camera and talking about a sex life it's ridiculous it's awful but if you're trying to make the judgement does it have zero efficacy like if you're this a simple binary does it work or does it not work it's not easy to just say with this kind of cultural expression well it doesn't work it's broken it should be get discarded right I mean by the same token I'm not gonna sit here in a shallow way say to you that petaa people their equal treatment animals that this organisation petaa that they've done nothing positive for the vegan movement by year after year having these awful embarrassing cringe-inducing terrible sexiest vegan competitions now rebranded as most beautiful vegan I'm not gonna say that's you I'm sure somewhere maybe right now in the comment sections video someone can put up their hand and say that they discovered veganism and joined the movement or first took an interest in the ethics or the ecology of animals and you know the importance of not eating meat because they read in a newspaper that Maggie Q was thus allegedly the sexiest vegan in the world according to this you know charity this nonprofit that does this thing it's gonna have more than zero outcome right but here's the metric it's not arithmetic where we compare things to zero value right life is short the process and the product here involves you you have only so many years of your life you have only so many hours in so many days to try to make an impact and you have to decide is this how your time and your budget is gonna be spent I've raised this question most recently with the you know a form of vegan activism that involves standing in silence wearing a mask for four hours and that I asked the hard question that inevitably has been asked isn't there a more effective way for you to be spending your time and sure to some extent money in that case it's more times than money I can't imagine anything less effective for peda to be doing with this time and money and effort like I really think if you sat down and did a brainstorming session and threw darts at a board and tried to come up with something you know what could be worse and the sad irony is what this really shows just like the example I talked about from from tumblr from this blog just like the example this meme showing a very sickly woman dying of a disease contrasted some beautiful bikini model it shows the profound discomfort with both physical beauty with sexiness itself and the discomfort with talking about ethics as ethics pedda if you want to give an award for the most ethically outstanding vegan of the year do that tell that go right ahead if you want to give an award for the most outstanding creative artist in veganism of the year or the best documentary filmmaker of the year there are so many awards that ava duvernay could be a respected candidate for and where i think she would respect and appreciate the award more and where the public would respect and appreciate what petaa was doing more but you make a farce out of yourself you make a farce out of Ava Duvernay you make a far set of veganism by pretending to give an award for most beautiful and most sexy vegan when you're so deeply uncomfortable in dealing with what beauty and sexuality are really all about [Music]