Angry Green Girls: Softcore PETA

Via Sociological Images, Treehugger—an hugely popular environmental web site that describes itself as "the leading media outlet dedicated to driving sustainability mainstream"—has a post today about a group calling itself Angry Green Girls. Basically, they're a group of "hot" women (ahem, "girls") who "use [their] hotness for getting attention, but for a good green cause."

Angry feminists usually get the eye roll. But what about angry green girls? Seems like they're getting plenty of attention ... From hybrid-only bikini car washes to nearly naked shower tips, check out how Angry Green Girl broadens the eco-issue umbrella through her sarcasm-laden eco-tips. Water issues have never looked quite like this.

OK, let's assume the writer is just using the "angry feminists" canard as a lazy segue into her larger point about OMG HAWT ENVIRO GIRLZ. The larger problem is that mainstream environmental publications like Treehugger see environmentalism as a compartmentalized "issue" that has nothing to do with women's rights. In that view, exploiting women's bodies is bad, unless, of course, it's for a "good green cause." Then it's just "using sex" to sell environmentalism—and who could disagree with that?

I mean, what are you, a prude?



The other "Angry Green Girls" videos show bikini-clad women lathering up Priuses and "rejecting" men who don't happen to drive hybrids—the subtext being that if you choose the right car, these women will be sexually available to you. Here, the message is that women are objects to be obtained through the right male behavior—no different, really, than suggesting that if you buy her dinner, she'd better put out.

In that way, the "Angry Green Girls" are no different than PETA, which routinely uses naked women as props for their anti-meat-consumption message. The only difference is that PETA's stunts are so blatantly anti-woman (putting women in cages; portraying them as pigs; having them lie on the ground, naked, looking "dead") that it's hard to see them as anything else. The Angry Green Girls are just softcore PETA—a misogynistic message wrapped in an organic string bikini.