The PETA Provocateur

A 2003 piece on the founder of the radical animal-rights organization. View in browser | Update your preferences A Reporter at Large The Extremist The woman behind the most successful radical group in America. By Michael Specter “I was sick of talking about my boyfriends and my boobs all the time,” the actress Pamela Anderson says in “Pamela, a Love Story,” a new Netflix documentary about her limelight-addled life. After Anderson’s sex-tape scandal, in the nineties—following the theft of a private video from her home—the former Playboy bunny and “Baywatch” star decided to use her notoriety for a good cause. She found one in People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the world’s largest and best-known animal-rights organization, popularly known as PETA. “Activism is sexy,” Anderson says. PETA agreed. “If a political organization can be said to have a muse,” Michael Specter wrote in The New Yorker, in 2003, “then the actress Pamela Anderson is PETA’s.” In March of that year, Anderson appeared on a gigantic PETA billboard in Times Square, naked but for three leaves of bedazzled lettuce. “Who could ask for anyone better than Pam?” PETA’s president and co-founder, Ingrid Newkirk, said about the ad, which promoted vegetarianism. “People drool when they look at her. Why wouldn’t we use that? We need all the drooling we can get.” Specter’s Profile examines the tactics and philosophy of PETA and Newkirk, whose alternately glitzy and punk-rock publicity stunts—one involving Anna Wintour and a dead raccoon—captured a new kind of activism, partly designed for the Internet. Consciously or not, activism of more recent years has often followed the PETA formula: “eighty per cent outrage, ten per cent each of celebrity and truth,” Specter observes. The approach reflects Newkirk’s “Barnum-like genius” for attracting attention—and, he writes, “insures that everything [the group] does offends someone.” That’s part of the point. Read the story Also from the Archive On Television The Bland Agenda of “Pam & Tommy” From 2022: The Hulu miniseries is only superficially antic; its politics are quite normie. By Doreen St. Félix Books Flesh of Your Flesh From 2009: Should you eat meat? By Elizabeth Kolbert More from The New Yorker Profiles The Defiance of Salman Rushdie After a near-fatal stabbing—and decades of threats—the novelist speaks about writing as a death-defying act. By David Remnick Annals of Psychology Why Everyone Feels Like They’re Faking It The concept of Impostor Syndrome has become ubiquitous. Critics, and even the idea’s originators, question its value. By Leslie Jamison Today’s newsletter was written by Emily Marion Clancy. Thanks for Reading. Let us know your thoughts about today’s edition. Plus, browse more newsletters and invite a friend to sign up for The Daily. You’re receiving this e-mail because you signed up for the New Yorker Classics newsletter. Manage your preferences | View our Privacy Policy | Unsubscribe The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from the products and services that are purchased through links in our newsletters as part of our affiliate partnerships with retailers. Copyright © Condé Nast 2023. One World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. All rights reserved.