Stop trying to make milk sexy
In July, Fergie released the music video to her new track, titled “M.I.L.F.$.” Now, this isn’t the American Pie acronym as we know it — Fergie has redefined M.I.L.F. as “Moms I’d Like To Follow.” Though Fergie claims the message of her song is about “empowering women who do it all,” the music video ironically hypersexualizes women and their consumption of milk.
Similar to Nicki Minaj’s “Anaconda,” the Fergie video features a concupiscent “Milfman,” who lusts after dancing celebrity moms. However, the message of female empowerment gets lost in the overwhelming parts of the video that, absent of sound, can be mistaken for high-class porn.
What really caught me off guard was the allusion to “Got Milk,” the American advertising campaign that vigorously promoted the consumption of cow’s milk through celebrity ads from 1993 to 2014. After an abrupt ending, the song resumed for its last hurrah, as a TV appeared with a twist on the iconic “Got Milk” campaign reading “got milf?” Following this message was what seemed to be a revival of the “Got Milk” campaigns — Fergie seductively poured milk all over her body while the other mothers drank milk and sported the infamous milk mustaches, perpetuating the myth that cow’s milk is a vital source of calcium and protein for bone and muscle growth.
In contrast to the school curriculums that necessitate dairy as part of the food pyramid, Fergie taught her students about alternative milk substitutes as she played the role of a (sexy schoolgirl) teacher for a nutrition class. The list on the board included the terms almond, coconut, rice, hemp, soy, dairy, protein, calcium and calories.
Though it’s unclear whether Fergie intended to endorse dairy — they could have been consuming almond milk — the lascivious use of the milk alluded “Got Milk” and the support of money-hungry dairy companies.
The dairy industry is horrific. Since female cows only lactate when they’re pregnant or have a newborn to feed, dairy workers repeatedly artificially inseminate them starting at the age of 12 months to continually keep them pregnant. Confined to what the industry calls “rape racks,” the workers send tubes with bull semen up the female cow’s vaginas. Sometimes the workers even stick their fists inside the cows to loosen the area.
When a female cow gives birth, the vicious cycle repeats itself. Female cows are taken from their mothers and raised to be milk machines, and male cows are slain before being sold as veal. The anguish the mother cow faces after having her babies torn from her sometimes results in days of continuous moans as she searches for her newborns.
The habitual insemination of female cows results in premature aging, exhaustion and mastitis — inflammation and sometimes infection of the udder. Pus and blood is commonly found in cow’s milk and is filtered, but not always completely. In the U.S., 750,000 somatic cells are allowed per milliliter. Somatic cells, which in this case are mostly white blood cells, are the same as the pus that erupts from a giant zit.
After usually four to five years of incessant exploitation, the female cow collapses, and is then taken to the meat industries to be slaughtered and sold as meat.
Aside from the explicit abuse, dairy has time again proved to be detrimental to our health. In fact, the USDA, responsible for creating the food pyramid guidelines, had a team of their scientists look into the scientific basis of the claims made in the “milk mustache” ads. The department revealed that milk doesn’t actually benefit sports performance. It also stated that dairy is linked to prostate cancer and heart diseases and causes digestive problems for 75 percent of people with lactose intolerance (maybe because humans aren’t meant to consume cow’s milk!). Finally, a more well-known fact is that countries with the lowest rates of dairy and calcium consumption — Africa and Asia, for instance — have the lowest rates of osteoporosis.
Needless to say, you can get all of the calcium and protein you need from plant-based sources, such as kale, spinach, almonds,tofu, tempeh, tahini, beans, bread and broccoli.
While Got Milk’s campaign should have been called Got Beastiality or Got Pus, Fergie was spot on with “Got Milf,” as she’s proved with her 112 million Youtube views that sex sells.
However, had Fergie continued to extend upon the message of female empowerment, she could have sparked social change for females — both women, by delving into the celebrities’ success as leading figures — and cows, by advocating for plant-based milks.
Tessa Nesis is a sophomore majoring in NGOs and social change. Her column, “The Sentient Bean,” runs on Thursdays.