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Abstract
Veganism is an ideology that is recently talked especially in digital media. Focus on the ideology of consuming products and services without animal exploitation, Veganism has a lot of organizations from international and local. PETA is one of the founding organizations of Veganism ideology, where PETA actively fights for animal rights such as in their ads and campaign. However, it was found that there are sexist elements in how they represent women in the campaign ads.
Therefore, this research discusses the meaning of sexist representation in PETA’s campaign ads. The researcher uses the semiotic method by Roland Barthes, usually called as Barthesian method. Using this method, the researcher studies the meaning of sexism representation using Denotation, Connotation, and Myth. The researcher took 14 campaign ads to study, where all the ads were taken from PETA’s YouTube channel. The researcher took some scenes for the research data, then it is discussed using the Barthesian method from the view of Denotation, Connotation, and Myth.
Based on the research that has been done, it is found that campaign ads of PETA still consist of sexist representation. From the outline, there are three sexist views that PETA gave to women, such as the view of media, public places, and domestic. From the three views, there is a sexist representation that results in prejudice, discrimination, objectification, and physical assault that is aimed at women in PETA’s campaign ads. For example, PETA associated consumerism habits with women, discriminated against women in the workplace, objectified women in media, and showed women being physically assaulted in public areas such as parks.