The Pornography of Meat

The author of The Sexual Politics of Meat returns with an emotionally charged volume based on her traveling lecture-slide show. Adams, a crusader for the rights of women and animals (or, as she calls them,""nonhumans"") charges that both have long been portrayed as consumable, mouth-watering slabs of meat, and she provides graphic backup for her argument in the form of advertisements, signs, photographs and illustrations (e.g.,""Strip Tease,"" reads a billboard for a steak house). The advertising industry is the primary culprit in the""thingification"" of women and nonhumans, she says, an argument whose first part will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with Jean Kilbourne's pioneering critiques of the industry's portrayal of women. That advertisers often exploit women's bodies to sell products and that most factory farms treat animals abominably are incontrovertible facts. But Adams's use of familiar hierarchical oppositions (woman is""not man"" and animals are""not human,"" with the""not"" always being subordinate) to argue against such industries sometimes undermines her points, by reinforcing, rather than subverting, such binary constructs. Advertising is patriarchy's""self-promotion,"" she says, and we must""Stop consuming nonhumans. Stop consuming women and children."" Adams is an admirable zealot, and it's too bad that this book doesn't include any kind of post-feminist sensibility to add depth and nuance, because it can wind up sounding shrill, strident and outdated. While Adams's chick/chick parallels, among other arguments, are certainly provocative, some readers may struggle with her assertion that""the line between the pornographer's works and the actuality of female meat animals' lives may be nonexistent."" The 200 black-and-white illustrations are startling, and perhaps the book's best feature--they document broad spectrums of culture and speak to powerful trends of exploitation. Adams's arguments captivate, but when her prose sometimes jumps erratically from one critique to another, the book can feels too much like the slide show narrative that inspired it, or a free-association protest.