Last night, Lady Gaga tried once again to shock the world, this time by wearing a “meat dress” during her acceptance of the Video of the Year award at MTV’s Video Music Awards. Lately, Lady Gaga has been having a hard time keeping her act “over the top.” Wearing a dress made out of cuts of dead cows is offensive enough to bring comment, but someone should whisper in her ear that there are more people who are upset by butchery than who are impressed by it—and that means a lot of young people will not be buying her records if she keeps this stuff up. On the other hand, maybe it was fake and she’ll talk about that later. If not, what’s next: the family cat made into a hat? Meat is the decomposing flesh of a tormented animal who didn’t want to die, and after a few hours under the TV lights, it would smell like the rotting flesh it is and likely be crawling in maggots—not too attractive, really. The stunt is bringing lots of people to PETA.org to download a copy of our vegetarian/vegan starter kit, so I guess we should be glad.

A wonderful side note to mention, Ellen DeGeneres (who is vegan herself), presented Gaga with a veggie bikini and suggested she try that next time she wants to make a statement. Thanks, Ellen!

Written by Ingrid E. Newkirk