“Salvation Army’s bell ringers had some stiff competition Wednesday. Wearing 6-inch heels, black stockings and a short red skirt, 20-year-old People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals intern Jessica Parry arrived in Market Square at noon to hand out free vegetarian Tofurky meals to passersby. Playing the role of PETA’s ‘Sexy Santa,’ the Penn State junior was on day two of a weeklong tour of the Northeast aimed at promoting vegetarianism during the holiday season… Occasionally, Rivas-Rivas said, PETA, which also boasts actress and model Pamela Anderson as a spokeswoman, does get flack from fellow advocacy organizations for using sex appeal as a means to promote their cause. ‘That’s what attracts people’s attention,’ Rivas-Rivas said, noting that the organization’s president is a woman. ‘We didn’t make up the rules but we’re certainly going to play by them.’” —Foster’s Online (US)

PETA is like the Courtney Love of activist organizations — willing to say or do anything outrageous so long as it gets attention from the press. From the organization’s perspective, they figure that the end justifies the means. If their on-the-street people have to dress like sluts to get attention for their cause, then so be it. Whatever it takes.

So for the last two years (perhaps longer?), PETA has been trotting hot co-eds out to podunk towns dressed as Sexy Santa. (Here’s a rather chaste picture of one.) This is supposed to grab the attention of the local hunters and trappers and make them realize how awful they treat the little Bambis, Mickeys, and Scooby-Doos of the world. It’s hard to believe that these physical revelations really inspire any mental ones, since the sight of tits and ass usually make men not more but rather less moral. But then again, who cares really? A pretty activist is always preferable to a dour one. You can save money on the nude carwash by going down the street to the PETA demonstration.

Then again, you can never quite be sure that a pretty PETA babe is really a babe. A few years ago there was a well-publicized flap about a PETA “lettuce lady” who appeared on the Howard Stern radio show and basically got naked to save the lives of some low-life animals (a roach, a worm, a lobster) that Stern threatened to kill if the chicks didn’t strip. And it turned out that the “lady” was really a transsexual named — at birth, anyway — Kevin. So maybe along with the meat substitutes, PETA gets the last laugh by making other sorts of substitutes too. You go down to the demonstration thinking you get to see Sexy Santa, a chick dressed up as a man, but you might end up seeing a man dressed up as a chick dressed up as a man.

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