Local Design Students Win PETA Award for Creatively Countering Speciesism
For Immediate Release:
May 22, 2023
Contact:
Nicole Meyer 202-483-7382
Fresh on the heels of the Young Ones Student Awards, which showcase students’ talents in creative studies, Brigham Young University’s (BYU) AdLab is being crowned a winner of PETA’s Choice Awards for its video entries championing animal rights. Students were asked to create ads that call attention to the abuse endured by animals used for clothing and that challenge speciesism, the human-supremacist belief that other animals exist for our benefit.
In “Every Baby Has a Mother,” a doting mother snake and her baby enjoy a day at the park, playing at home, and snuggling in for a movie before falling asleep together on the couch. But in the morning, the mother awakes to find her baby gone and searches through the house, panicked. The scene then shifts to an image of a snakeskin handbag being purchased online. The stop-motion video shows that the loving bond between mother and offspring exists in many species but that animals are routinely torn away from their mothers so their body parts can be used for clothing and accessories.
The similarities between humans and other animals are also featured in “Love Is Human,” which demonstrates how pigeons fall in love and stay together for life. And in a spoof ad titled “Lil’ Luxury Lucy,” a doll comes with her own cow and sheep, whose skins can be torn off to make the doll’s leather and wool clothing. “Awesome! It’s just like real life!” the kids in the ad proclaim. The video ends by asking if it feels wrong—because it is.
“These winning videos from BYU reveal the plight of animals whose cries go unheard, including when they’re separated from their mothers and abused and killed for fleeting fashion statements and other human whims,” says PETA Senior Director Danielle Katz. “With the help of these creative design students, PETA is reminding everyone to use their talents to speak out against speciesism.”
Other concepts recognized by PETA include “Animals Anonymous” by students from the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York; “All Pain Sounds the Same” by a student from the School of Visual Arts in New York; “Everyone Has a Mom” by students from the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon; and “No Escape” by students from the College for Creative Studies in Detroit.
PETA’s motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear or abuse in any other way.” For more information, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
