• Mood: snarky

My man doesn't need turtle eggs.

A variety of turtle species around the world are endangered, largely due, shockingly enough, to us people. In particular, all of the turtles that breed and nest in Central America run into the problem that people like to eat their eggs. The mama turtle crawls up on the beach to lay her eggs and then she heads off into the ocean and lets the little ones incubate in the hot sand and then fend for themselves come hatching time. Since mama leaves very clear tracks to the nests, it's easy for people to make a note of where the nest is and go harvest it a few weeks later. This has, as you might imagine, a big impact on the populations of these turtles, and it's a major problem for the endangered ones.

Part of the appeal of turtle eggs is that they're seen as a potent aphrodisiac, something of a natural male enhancer, as Bob Dole would say. A Mexican environmental group has run up an interesting ad in hopes of playing on this myth to encourage men not to eat turtle eggs:


This has caused a bit of a ruckus with feminists who complain that it's playing on sexist stereotypes and exploiting women as sex objects:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/25/international/americas/25mexico.html (anonymous7/anonymous7)

I happen to think it's a splendid gimmick and I hope it gets a few turtle-egg-eating-men to stop. To the feminists, I say: Pick your battles, people! As kcatalyst commented, "It makes a lot more sense to have a scantily clad woman in this ad campaign than in basically all of the other ones."