How the Go-Go’s Helped Launch the Most Controversial Celebrity Activism of the ’90s
In October of 1990, pop-punk superstar The Go-Go’s stepped into the studio on a mission. But it wasn’t a recording studio … and the mission wasn’t music. Instead, Gina Schock, Kathy Valentine, Belinda Carlisle, Jane Wiedlin, and Charlotte Caffey entered famed celebrity portrait photographer Greg Gorman‘s studio, stripped out of their clothes, stepped behind a banner that read “WE’D RATHER GO-GO NAKED THAN WEAR FUR” and launched People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals’ (PETA) most famous and longest-running ad campaign.
Dan Matthews, PETA’s senior vice president of campaigns, fleshed out the charity’s “I’d Rather Go Naked” campaign after seeing Florida animal rights activist Holly Jensen holding a sign with the slogan “I’d Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur” while wearing a flesh-color leotard. The Go-Go’s shot was turned into purchasable posters, proceeds from which were donated to PETA, and also splashed across billboards around the country, turning the animal-loving chart-toppers into the most visible animal rights activists in the nation.
Their lips aren’t sealed
According to an Entertainment Tonight clip about the photoshoot, The Go-Go’s actually were naked behind that banner, though ET host Mary Hart pointed out moments in the clip that revealed that at least some of the girls wore strapless bras and underwear.
The Go-Go’s lead singer, Belinda Carlisle, said the band agreed to be PETA’s inaugural poster girls for the campaign to bring attention to the truth “as to the story behind fur coats.”
The Go-Go’s weren’t strangers to seeing images of themselves stripped down in public. They appeared in towels and face cream masks on the cover of their 1981 album Beauty and the Beat. The following year, they posed in white Hanes undies for a Rolling Stone cover shot styled by famed photographer Annie Leibovitz. According to the story’s writer, Steve Pond, unbeknownst to the band members, the finished product was delivered with the sophomoric headline “Go-Go’s Put Out,” causing most of the members to express their disappointment.
Pond noted that bassist Kathy Valentine even addressed the debacle in her 2020 memoir All I Ever Wanted.
“It was a dream come true to be on the cover of Rolling Stone, but why had they gone out of their way to make a joke out of our cover?,” Valentine wrote. “This pinnacle had a bitter aftertaste.”
Wiedlin’ her power
Photo © Focus Features /Courtesy Everett Collection
The 1990 PETA shoot might seem like fine revenge for the Rolling Stone insult, taking their underwear shoot one step further, and for a fine cause, to boot. But by then, the women had already appeared, clothed right down to their toes, on a second Rolling Stone cover and made peace with the publication.
The shoot actually resulted from The Go-Go’s cofounder and guitarist Jane Wiedlin being an active animal rights activist. Wiedlin began working with PETA in 1989 and was Matthews’ good pal.
Since then, a veritable who’s who of actors, models, musicians, dancers, and sports stars have appeared in the campaign over the course of its 30-plus years. Singer P!NK showed off her tattoos while urging folks to “be comfortable in your own skin and let animals keep theirs,” while Mötley Crüe bad boy Tommy Lee and disgraced NBA star and former fur wearer Dennis Rodman extolled thinking “ink, not mink.” Lee’s former wife, lifelong animal lover Pamela Anderson, convinced folks to “Give Fur the Cold Shoulder.” And former Real Housewives of New York star Bethenny Frankel posed nude in front of the Big Apple skyline.
The effort proved so successful that PETA even took it a few steps further. Clueless actress and vocal animal rights activist Alicia Silverstone helped the charity expand the effort to wool, while Smallville star Laura Vandervoort advocated against reptile skin. WAGS LA star Nicole Williams’ 2016 “Leather is Rip-Off” ad went for shock value, showing the NFL wife having the skin on her back pulled off, exposing blood-red muscle and tissue below it to illustrate the horrors of skinning animals to make leather.
Less skins in the game
Brian ZAK/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images
After 30 years, PETA brought the campaign to an end for the very best of reasons — the fur industry was in deep decline and new laws restricted the production and sale of products made from animal skins.
“It’s kind of rare for a charity to be able to cancel a campaign because of its success,” Matthews told CNN in a February 2020 phone interview. “We all struggled for so long to make headway, but I think the tipping point has been reached in the past few years, with so many people and designers turning off of fur.”
Since then, new generations of entertainers, from Lizzo to Tove Lo, have joined veteran performers like Joan Jett, Dawn Richard, and Leona Lewis to help PETA protest meat, fur, and leather productions and animal-based amusement parks and circuses, and to promote a vegan lifestyle.
The Go-Gos, July 1982. Everett Collection
As for The Go-Go’s, some members’ activism didn’t end when they left that 1990 photo shoot. In 2020, Belinda Carlisle teamed with PETA on a “Go-Go Vegan” t-shirt that’s still for sale in the online PETA shop and helped the charity pressure Costco to stop selling a brand of coconut milk after it was revealed that the company used monkeys as forced laborers. And Wiedlin, who now lives in Santa Cruz, California, recently discussed her animal rights work at a local festival.
When it comes to protecting critters, PETA’s original poster girls are still head over heels
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