Selling Sex to Save the Forests

Victoria’s Dirty Secret and other political groups take it off to get some attention.

By Desirina Boskovich, Emory University

I’m expecting an auditorium, with rows of packed seats. Instead, I am directed to a conference room, tucked away in a corner on the fifth floor of Emory University’s Math and Science Building. The fifth floor is the unique and sequestered environmental studies floor—the walls are splashed with colorful nature paintings, and the men’s urinals are shockingly au natural, or at least, so I’ve heard. Students file into the conference room, taking seats around the table, helping themselves to the brownies and carrot cake set up in the back corner. Most are members of e.c.o.s.e.a.c., Emory’s environmentalist club, and this is just another meeting for them. All in all, there are about twenty kids here.

The speaker, Joshua Martin, is an organizer for Forest Ethics, a non-profit forest protection group in San Francisco. He is dressed the part in a green fleece vest and a black knit hat, lugging a reusable coffee thermos. So you can understand my surprise when he starts whipping out the photos of near naked ladies.

He’s here to tell us about the Victoria’s Dirty Secret campaign, one of Forest Ethics’ current projects. Forest Ethics is an action group with a different strategy. Their website calls it “harnessing the power of the marketplace.” Instead of using litigation or lobbying, they try to work directly with major businesses, who are the main producers and consumers of paper and lumber. According to Martin, this strategy is “a really empowering one” for individual people, who want to take back control that corporations wield over their lives.

The Victoria’s Dirty Secret campaign employs this strategy. By tarnishing the corporate image of Victoria’s Secret, those involved hope to pressure the company into changing their business practices. Victoria’s Secret sends out over a million catalogs a day. Almost all the paper for these catalogs is produced from non-recycled content. Martin and his colleagues are worried about the effect this is having on virgin forests, like the Canadian boreal forest.

A boy in the back corner raises his hand. “So can you cancel your subscription? ... Not that I get one.”

There are many companies who send out an enormous amount of catalogs: all in all, around 17 billion catalogs a year. Few of these catalogs get recycled or read, and most just get tossed in the trash. Forest Ethics picked Victoria’s Secret as their target, not because they are the worst offender, but because “there are lots of ways to critique them socially.” And it makes for great throw-way campaign lines like “Victoria’s Secret isn’t so interested in full exposure when it comes to revealing where its catalogues come from.”

We are shown a log in lingerie and angel wings, headed for the office of one of those corporate execs. Martin tells us about his Valentine’s Day plans – to flood the office of CEO Leslie Wexner with roses from environmentalist groups. Instead of sexy endearments, the cards will be filled with pleas to stop destroying our forests.

Everyone likes roses. But although the room is full of sympathetics, not everyone is completely comfortable with the campaign’s tactics. Jessica Lewis, an e.c.o.s.e.a.c-er who baked carrot cake for the occasion, has mixed feelings. “I kind of felt like they were furthering this image of the environmental community as freakish activists. And yet, they were getting it done.”

The problem is one faced by many activist communities. By nature, protests are an antagonistic activity. So how do you use them to pull people in, instead of turning them away?

Martin responds to these concerns. He agrees it’s important to do everything strategically, “with the goal of protecting forests to always be in mind.” But he argues that getting people’s attention is most of the battle. People are distracted by everything around them, but once you can tell them about the problem, “They’ll understand the common sense and the real substance behind it.” In the end, he thinks the best strategy is to “be creative and try to reach out to all different kinds of people.”

So far, the Victoria’s Dirty Secret campaign does seem to be paying off. Victoria’s Secret has hired a PR firm to deal with the activists, expressing their interest in becoming “advocates rather than adversaries.” With gentle irony, Joshua Martin says that he is “very much looking forward to moving in that direction.” If you want to help join the campaign, visit their website.

College students are difficult to shock. This week, the Emory campus is plastered with advertisements for an event sponsored by the College Republicans–retro conservative Michelle Malkin discussing “Standing Up to The Girls Gone Wild Culture.” The poster ironically pictures a scantily clothed female chest, breasts about to be revealed. Next to this flyer, the chainsaw-wielding angel barely has a chance.

Victoria’s Dirty Secret, while perhaps inspired by other racy campaigns, is by no means the raciest. PETA has a long history of sponsoring controversial campaigns. The most famous of these is the “I’d Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur” campaign, launched in 1991. Initially inspired by a lone woman standing on a highway in a flesh-colored body suit, the campaign turned into what PETA terms “a decade of naked activism.” In 1992, a billboard featuring a nude Christy Turlington created media frenzy. And while the media had a heyday with the controversial campaign, even other environmentalists were disturbed by it. To many feminist critics, the campaign’s images advocated animal rights at the cost of objectifying women.

One of the latest PETA stunt campaigns is the promotion featuring porn star Ron Jeremy, “one of the most penetrating stars in the industry.” Pictured in a suggestive pose on a dreamy white bedspread, Jeremy tells us that “Too Much Sex can be a Bad Thing… for animals.” The accompanying press release contains painfully vulgar puns such as, “Recently, Ron proved that his biggest organ may be his heart when he took a break from his daily grind to pose for a new PETA ad promoting spaying and neutering.”

Another campaign which created a huge media buzz last year is Votergasm.org. Marketed to college students, this campaign attempts to do the near impossible–shock us. And I’d say that it does. They bill themselves as “a non-partisan, nonprofit organization that seeks to reverse two disturbing trends in American society: low voting rates among young people, and unacceptably low rates of youth sexual activity.” Last November they sought to rectify this situation by enlisting young people to sign a pledge to vote, and then have sex–with another voter of course. Their anthem is “Election Erection,” available on their website in mp3 format; their website illustrates their strategy with pornographic cartoons. The campaign received a huge amount of press: particularly when it was noticed and attacked by radio personality Rush Limbaugh.

In a crowded, media saturated environment, new tactics can bring new energy to small groups looking to get noticed. But, Votergasm.org and Forest Ethics need to have different strategies for getting the message out. Votergasm.org has less to lose– in all probability, no one will be so offended by their website that they decide not to vote. On the other hand, animal rights or environmentalist groups, which are often already considered fringe have to worry about being taken seriously by the media, their antagonists, and potential supporters. How progressive groups promote their images and causes depends on designing campaigns that walk the fine line between buzz generation and true substance. Though it looks promising, the jury is still out on Victoria’s Dirty Secret.