[imagesource:milkprocessoreducationprogram(milkpep)]

Aubrey Plaza’s got milk and wood.

It is interesting that everyone’s favourite purveyor of chaos has chosen to star in a video by the dairy industry marketing firm Milk Processor Education Program (MilkPEP).

This whole time I thought Plaza subscribed to a different kind of evil, not the genuinely scary, big-corp kind. But alas, here we are, being sold a product called “Wood Milk” by the White Lotus and Parks and Recreation star.

While Wood Milk sounds like something you might find in the Goop factory, or on Saturday Night Live, the daring product doesn’t actually exist. Thank heavens.

“Have you ever looked at a tree and thought, ‘Can I drink this?’” Plaza says at the start of the verging-on-viral video. “I did,” she says as she introduces herself as the co-founder of “the world’s first and only milk made from wood”.

As she goes on about this new milk alternative – which is mocking all the plant-based, non-dairy milk alternatives made from oats, almonds, soybeans, or coconuts – the actor can be seen posing serenely with logs, sprinkling herself with wood shavings, photographing trees up close, and punting the supposed benefits of this “artisanal,” “old-fashioned,” “eco-friendly,” and “free-range” nectar of the forest.

Yes, everyone in Cape Town feels personally victimised.

Plaza is odd, this ad is odd, and I guess all still makes sense in the world:

Everyone is disappointed that Aubrey has hitched herself to Big Dairy’s wooden wagon, so to speak, as MilkPEP, the same firm that came up with the massive “Got Milk?” campaigns of the 1990s and 2000s, is clearly behind her weird woody milk moustache:

the fact that this is actually a weirdly covert ad for the dairy industry is bonkers, aubrey plaza dairy propagandist https://t.co/MKKaMPc617

— frankie! (@from_frankie) April 20, 2023

I’m so heartbroken y’all. Aubrey Plaza out here doing ads for the dairy industry trying to make fun of plant milks by shilling “wood milk”. The desperation 😭 Aubrey how could you! pic.twitter.com/8lPfdDBdsL

— tobias 🌱 (@tobiasly) April 20, 2023

This Aubrey Plaza wood milk thing has made me so mad. It’s a marketing campaign for dairy milk paid for by got milk? who are a dairy industry marketing lobby. pic.twitter.com/F4qLkASBBl

— Jake Bolton (@JakeBolton) April 20, 2023

aubrey plaza working on an ad paid for by the dairy industry to make fun of plant based milks since more people have realized the impact large scale dairy farming has on the planet and arent buying their products is… fucked up tbh pic.twitter.com/rPUKlXakhC

— 🗯️ (@miyeonent) April 20, 2023

Per Yahoo! News, the critique has reached such a fever pitch (made louder by the fact that Plaza turned off the comments on her Instagram post of the ad), that people are commenting on Plaza’s other, non-milk-related posts to express their horror:

“Really disappointed that you’re not only endorsing dairy milk but also participating in an ad that mocks plant milks,” commented one user on Plaza’s Instagram on a post unrelated to the campaign. “Unfollowing.”

“‘Real’ milk has real victims,” one person commented on one of her unrelated Instagram posts. “Seems kinda cowardly to poke fun at non dairy alternatives and then turn off the comments.”

VOX points out that while Plaza’s mock TV commercial is tongue-in-cheek, the dairy industry is serious about its message: Only milk from cows is “real”:

It’s an odd claim, given that people have been drinking milk from plants for centuries. But plant-based dairy and meat products have also been subject to industry attacks charging that they’re overly processed (another odd claim, considering the dizzying complexity of modern-day meat and milk production).

But the stakes of the milk wars go beyond mere aesthetics. While the Wood Milk commercial touts the “realness” of cow’s milk, it fails to mention the very real harms of dairy production: air and water pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, inhumane treatment of cows, and dangerous conditions for a low-paid and vulnerable workforce, half of whom were immigrants in 2014, according to an industry survey.

Gosh. It is all really convoluted.

I am officially sticking to water.

[source:vox]