Posted on Tue, Aug. 30, 2005

Environmentalists' sexy ad outrages women in Mexico

BY LAURENCE ILIFF

The Dallas Morning News

MEXICO CITY - (KRT) - Showing some skin to reach Mexico's macho consumers isn't new. Sexy women sell everything from tools to beer. But the use of a Playboy model in ads to protect sea turtles has put one U.S. ecology group in the middle of a feminist flap.

Argentine model Dorismar lays in a provocative pose in one poster. The words "My man doesn't need turtle eggs" appear in large type above her. "Because he knows they don't make him more potent," the legend continues, as three turtles scoot along a Mexican beach.

The "sexy campaign," as the San Diego-based group Wildcoast calls it, is designed to stop Mexican men from consuming raw turtle eggs that have been illegally marketed as an aphrodisiac. The eggs are sold on the Pacific Coast, in Mexico City and elsewhere.

"No more Smokey (the) Bear," the group said in announcing the campaign this month.

It features three posters with the model Dorismar in provocative poses (www.tortugamarina.com). They are to be hung in restaurants, bars and public places beginning in September - the height of turtle breeding season.

There also are plans for the ads to appear on billboards and buses.

Women's groups, which now cope with issues such as rampant sexual harassment and a wave of sex killings of mostly young women, want a cold shower dumped on the "sexy campaign."

"It's outrageous," said the head of the federal government's Women's Institute, Patricia Espinosa, in an interview with the Mexico City newspaper Reforma. "It lacks the least respect for the dignity of a woman and places her only as a stereotype, an ornament."

The federal government and the state government of Guerrero, which have signed on to the $30,000 advertising campaign but provided none of the money, are caught in the middle.

The Federal Environmental Prosecutor's Office said in a statement that it had "not designed, financed nor distributed these posters in any manner," although its phone number appears on the posters to report violations. "The prosecutor's office considers it an obligation of all to protect the sea turtle, without `offending the dignity of women.'"

Guerrero Environmental Minister Daniel Monroy Ojeda said state authorities could not prevent the privately financed campaign from going forward, while the state Women's Ministry suggested that it be "modified."

"Such campaigns do not need to be carried out utilizing the image of women as sexual objects and consumer goods," said the head of the ministry, Rosa Maria Gomez, in a statement.

Although an estimated 14 million golf-ball-sized turtle eggs were deposited on one Oaxaca state beach earlier this month, environmentalists insist that the aphrodisiac myth is a serious threat to the turtles and worthy of an edgy campaign.

Burqas instead?

"I was surprised at the reaction and I consider myself a feminist," said Fay Crevoshay, communications director for Wildcoast. "Being a model is not a career one should be ashamed of," she said. "What are we supposed to wear, burqas?"

Crevoshay said that she expects the federal government and the state of Guerrero to be part of the campaign when it kicks off in September as planned - with or without them.

Hundreds of thousands of the eggs are consumed annually, mostly by Mexican men 23 to 75 years old, she said.

In Mexico, the fight to save the sea turtles is akin to saving whales or baby seals in the United States. Music groups such as Mana and Los Tigres del Norte have joined the latest campaign.

The consumption of turtle meat and eggs nearly wiped out the Green Turtle in the 1990s, Crevoshay said. Tough laws to protect them have resulted in a rebound for that species. A different one, the Leatherback, is 95 percent extinct, she said.

Homero Aridjis, president of Mexico's ecology-minded Group of 100, said some feminist groups are overreacting to the turtle campaign, which is, at the heart of it, trying to get the attention of men who obviously have sex on their minds.

"I'm glad Dorismar agreed to cooperate, but next time I would prefer a Mexican actress," Aridjis said.

---

© 2005, The Dallas Morning News.

Visit The Dallas Morning News on the World Wide Web at http://www.dallasnews.com

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.

Turtle ads get in feminists' hair
A Mexican women's agency says a sexy model is no way to promote better treatment of sea creature's eggs.

By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
The New York Times

MEXICO CITY Women in scanty dress are used to sell everything from cars to cigars here, but environmentalists' efforts to harness a model's sex appeal to stop men from eating turtle eggs as an aphrodisiac has created a stir.

The campaign features a model in a swimsuit. Next to her are the words "My man doesn't need turtle eggs." The caption below reads, "Because he knows they don't make him more potent."

Environmentalists behind the campaign say they are trying to reach men who buy turtle eggs from street vendors for a dollar and eat them raw with lime and a pinch of salt as a sort of natural Viagra.

"We said, 'Let's have a sexy girl saying that the man I choose doesn't need sea turtle eggs,' " said Fay Crevoshay, communications director for Wildcoast, a San Diego-based environmental group. "This is what I call target marketing. We are talking to a certain type of man that will look at this and will get the message."

But one woman's marketing is another's exploitation of the female body. Patricia Espinosa, president of the National Institute for Women, a govern ment agency, has denounced the advertisements as promoting a sexist stereotype. That prompted the governor of Guerrero, the southern state where many turtle eggs are gathered and sold, to retract a promise to let the ads go up in markets next month.

"We are not against the campaign itself," Espinosa said in an interview. "What we are against is the stereotype of a woman as a sex object."

At the center of this struggle between feminists and environmentalists are various types of sea turtles, a species much older than humanity that has faced an uphill battle for survival in recent decades.

Every year, hundreds of thousands of turtles haul themselves ashore to lay their eggs on Mexico's Pacific beaches. Many fall prey to poachers who kill them for meat and steal eggs from the corpses. Others raid the turtles' sandy nests to get eggs.

In recent years, the olive ridley turtle has been making a comeback, mostly because armed federal agents and marines guard its nesting grounds in the state of Oaxaca. It has been a different story, however, in the state of Guerrero and other spots along the Pacific coast, where poachers still operate.

Even in Oaxaca, the turtles are not safe. This month, poachers bludgeoned and chopped to death some 80 protected sea turtles, ripping out the eggs and leaving shells scattered on Escobillo Beach.

Homero Aridjis, a poet and environmentalist who has fought for years to save the turtles, said opponents of the advertisements were being overly prudish and should turn their attention to the violence against women in places such as Ciudad Juárez, where hundreds have been killed.

Besides, he said, seminaked women on billboards sell perfumes, lingerie, beer and tequila. Why, he asked, are the women in the government institute scandalized by one more model in a bikini?

"They don't understand the goal of the campaign," said Aridjis, who leads the Group of 100, an influential organization of intellectuals and environmentalists. "It is directed at men, to capture the attention of the macho Mexican man who uses the turtle eggs for sexual ends. The campaign tries to be sexy precisely to capture their attention."

Espinosa, though, says the turtle lovers should find another way to get attention. "The end of discouraging the consumption of turtle eggs doesn't justify a campaign like this," she said. "I think this model, who is so lovely, could do the campaign, inviting people not to consume the eggs, without creating these stereotypes."

The women's institute is not without clout. It has gone to war with car companies, lingerie shops and other companies that peddle their wares with underdressed women. The agency once forced Mercedes-Benz to drop an ad with a sexual double entendre and stopped a sexy series of ads for Vicky Form lingerie.

The $30,000 advertising campaign of television spots, billboards and posters is supposed to kick off officially in September - high season for poachers - but the opposition might put it in jeopardy.

Not only has the government of Guerrero pulled back, but federal environmental officials, who first backed the idea, have also distanced the government from the campaign.

The reaction has stung Crevoshay, who vows to find volunteers to put up the posters even without the government's blessing. A veteran of the feminist movement, she regards the ability to show off the female form without shame as a fundamental right. She points out that the model in the campaign, Doris Mar, is working for free because she believes in the cause.

"Why can Pepsi-Cola use a woman in short shorts and a little top, sweating in the desert?" Crevoshay asked. "If I put a picture of a turtle up, who's going to look?"