when i worked at a nonprofit animal hospital, fur-industry exposé videos made the rounds like pornography. to this day i'm not sure why we circulated them among ourselves; most of us had eschewed animal products for years already (i've been a strict vegetarian since i was 14), some of us protested in front of the neiman marcus in san francisco's union square, and none of us wanted anything to do with fur. there's something to be said for becoming better-informed and for keeping one's righteous indignation at a fever pitch, sure, but i wonder if i should have tried harder to make joe watch one with me. i never even thought about looping in other family or friends.
i stopped buying new leather a year or two ago. since then i've picked up a few pairs of used leather shoes on ebay; i wasn't contributing directly to the demand for new leather, i reasoned, and i wasn't buying up the flimsy faux stuff which enters the market with a foul petrochemical belch. better, right? i also started saving up for a fancy-ass, new-to-me purse (as the one i've been carrying every day for the last four years has started degrading with gusto): as of this winter, for every kilometer i've run, i've added a dollar to a big old matzo-ball soup jar which lives on a shelf in my closet.
sprained ankle notwithstanding, i've been running quite a bit, and a custom ebay alert informed me this past weekend that a gal in poland would sell me her gently-used, authenticated bag for a price my jar could handle. here is one of the many points in this narrative at which i probably sound like a dipshit: i opened a new browser window and called up google images of lambs (the fancy-ass bag in question is made of pebbled lambskin). morrissey skittered through my head: a death for no reason / and death for no reason is murder. oh, hell. i couldn't buy a lamb's skin, no matter why or how long ago it died.
lifestyle modification I: no more purchasing leather, period. i'll use the pieces i still have, repair them as i can until they fall apart, and replace them with non-leather products.
in my four-hundred-and-fifty-first conversation with joe about whether or not the polish gal and i had a deal, i was wandering the corridors of how to carry used leather without telegraphing the idea that i condoned it all. joe noted that i was attempting to convince him of something with which i myself didn't seem especially comfortable. i tried to argue around that for another half hour, realized i had to let go, and felt...free.
Suddenly [Kafka] began to speak to the fish in their illuminated tanks. "Now at last I can look at you in peace, I don't eat you anymore." It was the time that he turned strict vegetarian. If you have never heard Kafka saying things of this sort with his own lips, it is difficult to imagine how simply and easily, without any affectation, without the least sentimentality—which was something almost completely foreign to him—he brought them out.i came across that excerpt, on kafka's visit to a berlin aquarium, in jonathan safran foer's eating animals, a book i avoided for years and finally picked up a few weeks ago. it's kicked up dust in my chest as well; that's the next story.
(max brod, from franz kafka)
18 comments:
I'm happy you are clear. That's a gift.
have you found a good alternative to the petrochemical BLECH stuff ? I suppose there is always canvas ...
that was posted by 17beats.blogspot by the way. your comment layout is different from what i'm used to ... i don't adapt well. tee hee.
I'd be interested in any non-leather shoe recs. I go back and forth on using leather. Mostly back because it just seems that leather holds up better. Forge the better path and report back!
Also, Eating Animals has converted one of my co-workers to vegetarianism for the first time. Now it's tied with the China Diet for conversion experiences in acquaintainces.
i haven't (found an alternative to the petrochemical nastiness), yet; i haven't yet done a lot of looking, to be honest, because i really thought i was okay with the used-leather thing. it wasn't until i was contemplating such an expensive, significant purchase (that bag was going to cost almost $700, and i was going to carry it every day, just like the one i have now) that i realized used leather wasn't working for me, either. i'm on my third pair of target's mossimo flats (purchased in bulk last year), which are undoubtedly TERRIBLE for the environment; my only semblance of an excuse is that the avoidance of a death is a higher priority for me than the secondhand suffering of environmental impact. it's not a good solution, and i need a better one.
no worries about the comment system. it's really stupid, and i'd rip it out if i could (without it taking all of the site's existing comments with me).
i feel more myself than i have in a long time.
the brand i've experienced personally which is closest to both Fashionable and EcoFab is olsenhaus; unfortunately they are also punishingly expensive (a pair of hot flats made of 100% recycled television screens will set you back $150). that said, the olsenhaus sandals i once found on supersale (for, maybe, $40, via amazon, i think) has proved to be extremely durable.
some of the stuff at mooshoes (they have a store on orchard near our apartment) isn't bad; joe says that he'd buy his stuff there if he gave up leather (he hasn't yet).
i might just bunt and buy a pair of melissa crazy-plastic shoes; doesn't solve the eco problem either, but they won't be mistaken for leather, at least.
still working on cloth-shoe solutions. interesting note: most toms (which i wouldn't wear anyway, for they are ugly as sin) are NOT vegan (the vegan stuff is a collection within their collection).
eating animals has the potential to be a really significant book. i thought it would be preaching-to-the-converted for me (though, interesting note, i was doing my best to buy a bag before i read it so that said bag would be grandfathered in), but it forced me to engage with things i'd understood only in broad sketches before, and his research is solid. joe and i saw forks over knives (which cites the china research heavily) last fall, and i agree; if one acknowledges that THAT science is solid, it's hard to keep engaging with animal protein in the same way.
Wow, those olsenhaus shoes are hott. I've tried the melissa sandals on and they just didn't fit my foot right- something about the texture didn't allow for give. There's something appealing about the ace bandage-y Toms though- it'd be like you are a mummy. Not sure what one would wear them with, however. More bandages?
I dislike sandals - and there's something about my walking gait that keeps them from staying on my feet - so Toms work great for me (plus, you know, men look terrible in sandals anyway). I also picked up Eating Animals off the remaindered pile at Prairie Lights last evening. You enticed me to willingly purchase a JSF book. Kudos.
i really wish plastic shoes could be the answer to my problems, megan - i think i wasn't allowed to wear jelly shoes back in the day, and the neon hues solve my wearing-head-to-toe-black "problem" nicely - but yeah, the texture leads to blisters pretty consistently (almost all new shoes give me blisters), and the lack of breathability can be a problem as well. the melissa stuff is probably a pipe dream fo me.
in completely unrelated news, i picked up a mummies CD when we were at the hollywood amoeba store earlier this week. it's pretty great.
jacob, i am pleased you were willing to cut JSF temporary slack for me. there are parts of the book that will totally annoy you, i won't lie, but the research is capably presented for laypeople, and the case for vegetarianism is made politely (he doesn't even mention leather - for all i know, he and nicole k are a biker family). more on that in another Serious Post (which will probably have to wait until i'm back in new york - i doubt that one can be written on the beach like this one was).
I'll admit I put off reading Eating Animals until halfway through a trip in Germany. There was a lot of pasta pomodoro after that, in a country not known for its pasta pomodoro. These days I'm still omnivorous, but trying to stay as close as possible to staring the meat-is-murder aspect in the face (e.g. buying chicken from farms I've visited), while dabbling more and more in the vegan cookbook.
Any suggestions for office-friendly Fashionable + EcoFab clothing? Suits and blouses that actually fit, are made of something other than hemp, and aren't yawningly dull seem hard to come by. Is there a Kidchamp's Guide to Buying Vintage Online (pebbled lambskin handbags notwithstanding)?
Bravo to you for living your principles—and thanks for the nudge to keep moving in that direction myself!
boy, i should work on that; while used leather has its issues, used clothing-made-of-other stuff remains both eco and ethical. (thanks, e! i was just feeling sorry for myself re: all the used-leather-finding skillz i can no longer use).
my best trick re: office duds lately is buying shopworn helmet lang pieces for nothing on ebay and then tie-dyeing them, which...isn't especially scalable, but is INTENSELY SATISFYING if you can pull it off (the deconstructed blouses are great on their own if you have an eccentric office like mine, and useful as shells beneath cardigans or blazers if you don't).
my one office blazer (recycled italian wool, if i remember correctly) is from zachary's smile, found a few years back at a barneys warehouse sale (if you can handle the psychic impact, barneys warehouse sales are almost always worth it; they're especially good for loomstate stuff, which is both organic and fitted).
hmm. lemme keep thinking.
http://www.zoeharcombe.com/2012/03/red-meat-mortality-the-usual-bad-science/
http://theconversation.edu.au/ordering-the-vegetarian-meal-theres-more-animal-blood-on-your-hands-4659
i appreciate the links, but when they're presented sans commentary i'm not sure what to address. i...don't live in australia (where, unlike in the US, cattle are more likely to be pastured than to be raised on feed lots), so wild kangaroo (which i would not eat; eating flesh is morally unacceptable to me, full stop, and i would not do so under any circumstances) is hardly an eco-friendly food source for me.
again, interesting, but not especially helpful on its own. we were talking a bit about the china diet and forks over knives, sure, but that's not the same research; more to the point, the harvard school of public health stuff (and an obesity expert's response to it) aren't really pertinent here, as i'm talking about ethical vegetarianism, not vegetarianism motivated by health concerns.
there must be a word (german?), or should be, for this tendency for someone to point out others' alleged hypocrisy or failure to live up to ideals, even though s/he doesn't actually subscribe to that value system. vegetarianism/veganism seems to bring out this behavior in spades.
anyway, as you point out, US cattle are more likely to be raised on feed lots, and that feed comes from corn and soy (hello, iowa! man, we are the worst at this). as jsf points out, 98% of soy and some other huge amount of corn is for animal feed, not human consumption (thus, the term "sweet corn" that is used here in iowa which designates it as corn for people, not animals).
plus, grass-fed cattle produce more methane than feed-lot cattle because grass is less easily digested than corn/soy/factory feed, and methane is multiple times worse for global warming than CO2. so from an environmental standpoint (which i know isn't your primary reasoning, lauren) grass-fed beef is arguably worse.
in fairness to linky, i did rope in the environment bringing up the nastiness of faux leather. ideally there'll be a magical point at which i've become so cruelty-free that that i need a new primary concern to fill the void, right?
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