Melissa Sehgal, who vows to strip down to a nude body painted like a tiger and confine herself to a cage with a banner above reading, “Wild Animals Don't Belong Behind Bars” in Anaheim this morning, is actually on something of a tour, having already pulled the stunt in Fresno on Tuesday.
A member of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)–she goes by Vegan Mel on her MySpace page–Sehgal has been showing anywhere the Ringling Bros. and Barnum N Bailey Circus, ahem, pitches its tent. But that circus does not come to the Honda Center until July 15. Better to get the word out early, according to PETA.
When tigers aren't performing, they are warehoused in cages that are barely bigger than their own bodies. Elephants who are used in the circus also suffer. A federal judge is currently considering the verdict in a case against Ringling, which has been accused of violating the Endangered Species Act by chaining elephants for prolonged periods, beating and injuring them with bullhooks until they bleed, and more.
“I'll gladly bare my skin if it will help expose Ringling's abusive treatment of animals,” says Sehgal. “The best way to stop this abuse is for people to boycott Ringling and other
circuses that use animals.”
As her MySpace page shows, she is a veteran of stripping down for PETA, appearing nude all over the globe in protests against fur trapping, among other issues. She wore a bikini in the photo above at a demonstration against the treatment of chickens that wind up as McDonalds McNuggets.
She's scheduled to get pushed in her cage along South Lemon Street and West Center Street Promenade around 11 a.m.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.