Nigerian Vegan, will you marry me??

Thank you for adding your comments. It is good to realize that these may be issues that we have all thought about, but that one solution may not exist for everyone. I also am a big fan of “reusing”. Thriftshop granny cardigans peacefully coexist with vintage designer clothing in my closet. I also don’t take issue with leather, as it is currently a by-product. I don’t eat meat myself and would love to see that industry make some changes, but I don’t feel guilty investing in one or two well-made, nice pair of leather shoes per year, the rest I fill in with vintage. However, I find that when I spend more and buy what I really want, I don’t need to buy anything else. Instead, I am building a collection of clothes I intend to keep for quite some time.

I explored these issues and my relationship to my clothing in my year long fiftyRX3 project. I took a picture of what I wore everyday and categorized it by reuse-reduce-recycle. Not to mention I made a dress from salvaged umbrellas. I felt like people expected me to be in head-to-toe newly purchased eco-fashion, but blending in a lot of “second-hand” and vintage gave me many more options stylistically and financially.

If you are interested… http://fiftyrx3.com

best,

Jill Danyelle

I guess I’ll never be a vegan. This is too devisive an issue for me.

My big issue with McCartney’s fashion line is those ridiculous high heels! What’s “sustainable” about those? How healthy is that? Any chiropractor (or sensible person) can tell you that an elevated 6″ heel is a totally unnatural angle for the foot to be forced into let alone stand or walk in for more than a few minutes. Walking on your toes with you feet pressed into the front of the (narrow) shoe is, to me, akin to Chinese foot binding — both in the name of fashion and style and usually because it appeals (theoretically) to the guys. Sure it makes your calves look sculpted but to what end? I’d love to see the wearer have to hike 5 miles in those things. Sara Jessica Parker may have re-popularized the high heel in “Sex in the City” but come on, do you want to pay $500 a pop for torture? She had an alleged $40,000 invested in her shoe fetish. Really, isn’t being a fashion victim is torture enough?

From what I know about industrial sheep farming, is that once a particular age is reached, sheep are killed and eaten. That’s why Australia happens to be one of the worlds largest flesh exporters, delivering sometimes barely alive animals in ships to Middle and Far East markets. So it’s not like if you consume wool you’re not connected to the flesh trade.

Now if you are speaking of sustainability, it really doesn’t make any sense to exclude a particular brand of animals from that sustainability just to basically allow yourself do with them what you want. Using and killing a life is not sustainable by its very nature. Because you’re not sustaining – but using and deleting.

Annoying in these debates are also the various senseless discrediting attempts of vegan stances. Since animal exploitation will realistically not stop tomorrow, the question of what happens with the animals that are being exploited now is moot. There will be a gradual slide in the use of animal products as more and more people go vegan – and more and more do, luckily, and eventually it will fade out completely.

Another thing irritating me in these discussions is the mentioning of PETA. PETA is one animal welfare organization (though they’re calling themselves animal rights organization) out of hundreds, and their actions or opinions have a marginal weight in the overall vegan discourse. Why people keep coming up with the idea that vegans can’t think or reason for themselves and are mind controlled by one organization is beyond me.

However one of the worst and most cynical justification attempt for animal exploitation has got to be the “well if we stop using animals, this and this species will go extinct”. So what. These species didn’t exist in the first place, they were torture bred through human manipulation to have characteristics which benefitted humans – not them. Like giant udders, absurd amount of hair, menstruating an egg per day when normally in nature they would lay only 9 in an entire year. That people argue for the continuation of animal exploitation for their sense of visual bio-aesthetics is just as absurd as arguing for the continuation of human slave trade because Africans have better singing voices. Species can’t suffer – they are not alive. A species is a biological categorization of an animal group. It’s the individual that matters. And if for ending the enslavement, torture and suffering of individuals, a species must vanish then so be it. No one here in their right mind would argue that to keep Taleban “culture” alive, we must accept that women are publically executed. But exactly that line of reasoning is applied in the animal context. And it has got to stop.

BTW, I’m very disappointed to hear that Mrs. McCartney uses wool and silk in her products. Is that true? It would make her one of the long line of celebrity pseudo-vegans who water down the meaning of vegan to suit their interests.

I personally have issues with synthetics. Many emit aromas and odours that make me feel ill, and are often derived from petro-chemical products – have you asked indigenous peoples (Australi, N. America) how they feel about their land being raped in order to extract oil and minerals?
These people consider the earth to be their mother, and are sick and ashamed because they have failed to protect their mother.
I disagree with PETA purely because it has narrowed its vision to an illogical extent.

lets not dance around this issue: animals raised on farms are not held captive for their own benefit. the sheep are raised for profit, and all humane consideration is always secondary.