I like when scientific research proves what some of us have been saying all along. For example, animals have a perspective of the world that is rich and complex with emotion, and it’s all their own, and exists outside of what we choose to believe about them. They are valid individuals. Also, we always knew zoos were prisons for wild animals, making money and misery under the guise of “conservation”.
Jonathan Balcombe: ‘Stop being beastly to hens’. In a recent Guardian article and interview with animal behavior scientist Jonathan Balcombe says that our treatment of animals remains medieval despite a flood of studies shedding light on how they experience the world. Why are we so unwilling to change, even despite these findings?
In a critique debunking a recent study conducted by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA), Dr. Lori Marino, a neuroscientist and expert in dolphin and wale intelligence at Emory University, states “There is no compelling evidence to date that zoos and aquariums promote attitude changes, education or interest in conservation in their visitors, despite claims to the contrary”.
What did Beau Brummell, Lord Byron, Oscar Wilde, and Balzac‘s Henri de Marsay all have in common? They were “metrosexual” before the 20th century. They were “hipsters” before Williamsburg Brooklyn, Studio 54, and the sub-culture explosions during the last half of the 20th century. A traditional dandy was basically a dude who took care of his physical appearance meticulously and with intention. Like Brummel’s famous trousers, his abandonment of the wig and powder, and his more subtle yet careful appearance which led to what we consider classic menswear, he set fashion trends. Grooming, dressing, and accessorizing paired with a taste for intellectualism, leisure, and an air of stoic, collected, self-assurance may have been one of the first cultural attempts of what we now consider being “cool“. Often, the dandy aimed to infiltrate the upper-class, typically having been born into middle-class families. Blending-in with aristocrats, and being artists or poets, like Charles Pierre Baudelaire, gave the dandy a political edge and helped break down class separation, but some (usually those whose positions of power they threatened to acquire) accused the dandy of simply worshiping the self, or making a religion out of aesthetic hedonism. For Oscar Wilde and Lord Byron, who would have been the subjects of gossip rags today, the status of the Dandy required an audience and certainly laid the groundwork for our modern celebrities.
But was there something revolutionary (or at least subversive) about the rise of the dandy? Here was a society of bloodline aristocrats and the bourgeois whose main identifier was the way they looked and the activities they participated in, that was suddenly being threatened by stealthy, self-made, middle-class individuals armed with art and poetry and philosophy and dangerous politics who dressed well! Their prowess was “based on nothing at all” as J.A. Barbey d’Aurevilly observed about their genetic inheritance in 1845, but for French-revolution dandies who hung out in the bohemian quarters, they were celebrated for being radicals and breaking traditional boundaries designed by the bourgeois. They aimed to exude contempt for bourgeois society by imitating their dress code. The rock-stars of the late 1800′s were dandy poets whose subversive lyrics had incredible social impact.
Being a dandy can come in handy – especially if you have a political agenda. This scenario often makes me wonder what would happen if everyone showed up to a massive protest in a suit and tie (as opposed to cargo pants and slogan tee-shirts). The police would certainly be confused and the politicians would certainly feel threatened that the most obvious thing separating them from those at the bottom of the ladder was no longer there. Don’t get me wrong, I completely understand why so many people want nothing to do with (never mind mimic!) those in power. But within this scenario, we can see the power that fashion has in the realm of visual communication. There is a mainstream visual hierarchy that we play right into by not giving a crap about appearance. On a level of self, this is fine, but if your aim is to influence others and communicate with the mainstream, it helps to put your message in a handsome package that gives it a better chance of being listened to.
Looking good and kicking ass is stuff of myth, but James Bond doesn’t own the idea. So put on a tie and go save the world, already! And also check out the amazing and hilarious Yes Men who use the suit to subvert:
• GQ’s Spring Must-Haves include a vegan new-wave boat shoe from Sperry Topsiders (without those leather laces, finally), fancy pocket squares of every pattern and color, bright and bold striped ties and straw fedoras.
When searching for a striped tie that isn’t made from hundreds of worms who are boiled alive, we suggest hitting up your local thrift or vintage store which typically have piles of ties or our favorite vegan tie company, Jaanj.com. As for straw fedoras, that one thing we love about spring. You can avoid the wool hats and go with a 100% plant-based straw hat. LiViTY makes recycled, hemp, organic, and fair trade fedoras in some bold patters and classic shapes, and Engineered Garments makes an organic linen boater cap. We suggest keeping a lid on it and sticking to classics like these:
The Hill-Side offers some selvedge Pocket Squares that we find quite fetching:
• I’ll be as happy as the next guy to see SeaWorld go under. The next guy is our pal Gary Smith, and he’s written an article on SeaWorld and the exploitation of dolphins and whales that flooded the enterprise with a 1.4 billion profit last year. In the article over at Elephant Journal. Ric O’Barry, who was featured in the Oscar-nominated documentary film “The Cove” and serves as the marine mammal specialist for Earth Island Institute, shares some thoughts with Gary on the recent killer whale tragedy. If you needed to be convinced that captive seas mammals are unhappy, this will do it!
“Orcas are the most social animal on the planet, even more so than us,” said O’Barry. “Males will stay with their mothers their entire lives. When we capture an animal like Tilikum, we take him away from the two most important things of his life; the world of sound and family. We put them in a concrete box and expect him to stay mentally healthy. It simply doesn’t work.” - Rick O’Barry, Marine Mammal Specialist EII
• Is Discovery’s Planet Green FINALLY getting the meat/global warming connection? Or not. The promos for Emeril’s Green(washed) Kitchen still lists “beef” as a major ingredient, but I got a recipe for vegan chocolate mousse in my inbox this morning, and they have a vegan section. Strangely, their new showFuture Food: Gastronomic Geniuses seems like a bunch of dudes playing with their meat. The video showcases these “geniuses” shooting bratwurst with paint-balls, and trying to figure out the tastiest way to serve this meat up in mad-science ways. The maddest science is showcasing meat on a self-proclaimed “green” network when it’s the #1 cause of global warming! Hey Discovery, WTF!?
• Rock It Out: A Night to Benefit New York’s Farm Animal Sanctuaries
Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary
This benefit will feature live musical performances, a scrumptious vegan bake sale, and an awesome raffle all to benefit farm animals at Farm Sanctuary and the Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary! Check out what these sanctuaries do to save animals like Billy, who was taken in after almost being killed by a sledgehammer at a dairy farm just a few weeks ago:
Saturday, March 6, 2010 from 7:00pm – 10:00pm
Location: Reidy Hall at All Souls Church, 1157 Lexington Ave @ 80th St, Basement Level
$10 pre-sale, $15 at the door (cash only)
Pre-sale tickets can be purchased at: https://www.mycommunitytickets.com/event_info.asp?eventid=26496
• Did society create monstrous people, or do a collective of monstrous people create civilization? This was the topic of last week’s Hardcore History, and we suggest you listen. Totally mind-bending! Could widespread child abuse and bad parenting in earlier eras explain some of history’s brutality? We think so.
• Learn to Lobby for Animals with the HSUS. We are only a few weeks away from the 2010 New York State Humane Lobby Day on Wed, March 24th in Albany. Join fellow activists to help pass legislation to crack down on animal fighters, stop puppy mills, end canned shoots of captive exotic wildlife, and protect farm animals from cruel treatment. To RSVP and get more info, click HERE.
• Jessica Reid asks GGA readers if a No Kill Nation is possible when it comes to dog shelters. There’s always a fierce discussion on the GGA comment-board, so have you say!
“The truth is you cannot blame having to kill shelter animals on an “irresponsible public” or “too many animals” when a shelter doesn’t implement lifesaving and low cost programs. I personally witnessed missed opportunity after missed opportunity from alienating potential fosters to terrible customer service to rude behavior toward rescue groups. I heard the same stories from other volunteers. These were not isolated cases. These were failures of management and staff to do what they should be doing: saving lives.”
“We’re looking to kill a deer in the name of manliness”.
That’s what the host and subject of the documentary film “An Emasculating Truth” (presented by Dockers) says in the trailer. The trailer consists of very “manly” killing-things-drinking-womanizing-weight-lifting-bull-riding-gun-shooting-circumcising stuff that all lead to a Dockers-wearing dude trying to find out why men are becoming such sissies? Gosh, can’t we get back to being rugged, chiseled, animal-killing, stoic cowboys? Or can’t we at least embrace being lazy, apathetic, sloppy, couch-potato assholes who ignore our kids and expect the woman to cook and clean? I mean, if we’re gonna’ embrace gender stereotypes, why not all of them? When did becoming a man have to have so much… hair product in it?
“Women will succeed. They will eliminate men probably in a thousand years. There’ll be like a few men and like a lotta’ lesbians”.
Masculinity is in danger! Testosterone is down, 17% in the last 14 years! Men are becoming superficial, vain, feminized, gay, metrosexual, and ruled by the ladies they should otherwise be smacking around! Let’s blame it on Tofu! Or how about your female boss. That bitch. We’ve gotta organize and take this society and turn it into a patriarchy! oh, wait…
While Dockers doesn’t actually advocate violence toward women in this film, (just animals – who really aren’t deserving of consideration anyway, you sissy) they are capitalizing on a very trendy idea. A percieved loss of male identity within a culture that is already male-dominated seems to be satirical. But what if there is some truth behind this joke? Being the one who “wears the pants” basically means not letting a woman influence your decisions. Jamie Doak over at BUST Magazine does an excellent job of summarizing the sexism-as-satire vs actual sexism that can be found in this new Dockers Campaign. I guess it might be humorous if the Levi-Strauss company didn’t have such a recent and horrible history of abusing female workers:
Late in 1991 a Levi’s contractor in the US Pacific territory of Saipan was accused of keeping imported Chinese women in virtual slavery, confiscating their passports and forcing them to work 84-hour weeks at sub-minimum wages. A contractor in Indonesia who had been given a clean bill of health by a Levi’s inspector was found to be strip-searching female workers to determine whether they were menstruating as they claimed and thus were entitled to a day off with pay in accordance with Muslim law. Employees of a former Levi’s contractor in Mexico said that at least ten children aged under 14 worked at the plant; workers were laid off for a few days if they went to the toilet ‘too often’, and rain-water poured through the roof, collecting in puddles and causing electric shocks. source
May favorite part about Dockers’ Facebook page is the poll:
“Right or wrong taking a stand”? Total bullshit. Wearing toxic conventional cotton pants made by underpaid, mostly female workers is not taking a stand. It’s falling in line. Did you know that between 1981 and 1998 the Levi Strauss company, who owns Dockers, closed 69 plants and put 17,795 people out of work in the United States, including 1,000 white-collar jobs? They moved all their labor overseas and into Mexico where they can pay people less and factories continue to expectantly violate human rights. Even more factories have been moved overseas and into Mexico since then.
While Levi’s now claims to enforce strict labor standards at its factories, its recent history of mostly-female worker exploitationand its even more recent business (late 2007) with Maquiladoras that continue to violate workers’ rights in Mexico tells a different story. As recently as August of 2009, a factory in Lesotho making Levi’s was caughtdumping needles, razors and harmful chemicals at two municipal dumps that attract young children who search for pieces of clothing to sell. It’s not a desirable thing have leaked into the mainstream media, but the point is that when you have factories all over the developing world, its difficult and costly to maintain strict environmental and labor standards. Levi’s has made huge improvements – including beginning to purchase organic cotton and offer recycled denim, but WRAP certification might be a smart next step.
So what does it really mean to be a man who wears Dockers? Is this campaign a joke? You tell us.
Grasp your pearls, for the future of the luxury market is at risk! We saw this video over at EcoStiletto (a special that appeared on The Luxury Channel) and were both intrigued and sort of disgusted by these luxury brands who are finally realizing that their own futures are at risk if the resource-tap they call Earth dries up. With their own mortality in sight, the main question this video raises is, “Does looking and acting rich conflict with sustainability?” Hello? Does a bear shit in the woods?
Let’s get over the noble idea that these brands actually care about the Earth, right now. It’s like the classic case where a Hollywood mega-star get’s a disease and then suddenly they’re the biggest advocate for finding a cure. They are simply trying to save their own existence, which is not the worst thing. Often it can help, but in the case of an entire market, that means certain sacred cows can not be questioned. Like what? Poverty. Caste and class systems. Money. Materialism. Greed. Hierarchical power structures. Resource access. Viewing the planet as a stockpile of resources. Anthropocentrism. The list goes on.
One glaring issue is that companies like Gucci, Balenciaga, Yves Saint Laurent, Bottega Veneta, Alexander MQueen, and others that rule the world of luxury, who perpetuate images of desirable and unattainable lifestyles, are all addicted to leather, fur, cashmere, wool, and other animal products. We also know that raising livestock is the single greatest ecological threat that exists. So, until these brands convert all their products to be vegan (which is possible), it’s all greenwashing and very difficult to take them seriously. Even Stella McCartney, who uses no fur or leather, still uses plenty of wool. Once again, when talking about environment and sustainability, the livestock industry was completely brushed over and left out, although it is the single greatest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions.
If we leave it up to luxury brands to define the mainstream understanding of environmentalism, of course extracting things from nature and turning them into expensive products (and the social and political atmosphere maintaining their position to do those things) will not be questioned in itself. If we let luxury brands use their powerful positions to create the mainstream discourse on sustainability, it’s like letting a drug addict head up the ATF.
I was astounded to hear the list of luxury brands who helped create the documentary “Home” by Yann Arthus Bertrand. Do they not see how drastically they need to change everything about themselves? If the current definition of sustainability is “meeting the needs of the present without undermining the ability of future generations to meet their needs” then I wonder whether these brands could ever be capable of accommodating such an aspiration as that?
According to the video, the “I am not a plastic bag” phenomenon reduced plastic bag consumption in England, but is it simply an accessory of mass distraction as The Observer’s George Monibiot suggests? My fear is that greenwashing will prevail, not unlike the Canadian Fur Council’s “Fur is Green” and Diesel’s “Global Warming Ready” campaigns, and they will attempt to capitalize on the market value of “green” as opposed to actually changing industry practices from labor and environmental impact to animal welfare.
Heritage is what is at risk for luxury brands. Changing the factories, formulas, and ingredients of their products changes who they are at the core, which is a huge and uncertain undertaking. But if done thoroughly, honestly, and openly, it’s more than an opportunity. It’s common sense. It’s not biting off the hand that feeds them. It’s realizing that there is only one Planet Earth, yet many of us live in a way that requires three Earths to sustain the status quo.
What do you think? Can luxury brands change their ways? Or is the very nature of luxury in conflict with sustainability?
When John Durant of Hunter-Gatherer.com appeared on the Colbert Report the other night to promote the Cave Man Diet (Paleo Diet), it seemed easy to dismiss him as a total kook hooked on machismo. He sat on stage talking about climbing trees for exercise, looking for a lady with lactose-intolerance and celiac disease (that he could bash over the head and drag back to his New York apartment?), and complaining about the inherent health problems associated with industrial food production – especially grains and refined sugars, which most vegetarian chicks are hooked on, apparently. When asked what he eats for breakfast, he responded “eggs and bacon.”
“Huh?” I thought. I may not be an anthropologist, but I wondered if he snatched those eggs from a pigeon’s nest in Central Park (illegal) like his ancestors may have done in their local niche? His breakfast, unless it was wild boar bacon and local wild goose eggs is in contradiction to his own argument. But he did not clarify, so it may have been!
It turns out he’s not a total kook. The unfortunate part of this testosterone spectacle is that there is a lot of legitimacy to what John Durant might have to say about the way pre-civilized people lived, aside from what he thought they ate. For people like John and a gastroenterologist named Walter L. Voegtlin – who popularized the fad diet in the 70s, it’s just about diet and nutrition. Like Atkins, the focus on meat is neither nutritionally or historically accurate. The idea of hunting equaling manhood and simulated running-from-mammoths as a form of exercise belongs in the 1970′s along with the outdated and prejudice ideas anthropologists had about primitive peoples during that time. The true tragedy is that the social and political implications of dispelling myths about primitive peoples are not only left by the wayside, but stereotypes are embraced and exploited. In the same way that Durant might argue for the healthfulness of eating the entire orange as opposed to just drinking the juice, the fiber of the argument is left out in favor of something refined and out of context: the sweet juice of masculine vanity .
New York Times Article: The New Age Cavemen and the City (aren't vegans supposed to be pale?)
In a NYT Article in January, Durant’s three-foot-tall refrigerated meat locker is referenced, yet would never have been found in any cave.“The caveman lifestyle, in Mr. Durant’s interpretation, involves eating large quantities of meat and then fasting between meals to approximate the lean times that his distant ancestors faced between hunts. Then he says, “I didn’t want to do some faddish diet that my sister would do.”
Ironically, the Cave Man Diet has been qualified as a fad diet by the National Health Service of England and American Dietetic Association, yet well-planned vegetarian and vegan diets that his sister, and many of the women he complains about in his Colbert interview may partake in, are considered “healthful, nutritionally adequate and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases… [and are] suitable for all stages of the life-cycle,” according to the ADA. Colbert was clearly onto something in asking if this were some glorified form of the Atkins diet.
The biggest problem with John Durant’s beliefs about food lie in anthropological inaccuracy. Even today there is far too much variability among gatherer-hunter cultures to be able to illustrate “typical” behavior. But Recent discoveries like Ardi require us to re-write our evolutionary history, and more recent anthropological findings make a strong case that pre-civilized planet earth was, in most favorable climates, a bounty of gatherable foods, and evidence suggests that women provided 60-80% of the diet in gathered plant foods, much like the !Kung of the Kalahari Desert in southwestern Africa and the Mbuti of the central African rain forest [source].
Also left out of this popular fad diet is the evolutionary importance of the introduction of new plant foods, such as tubers, into the human diet when our ancestors transitioned from the forests into savannas [source]. If Durant were following a more accurate gatherer-hunter diet, and not one based on movies and out-dated anthropology, it would consist mostly of seeds, berries, roots, shoots, fruits, nuts, leaves, larvae, honey, shellfish, crustaceans and occasional additions of the organs and high-fat body parts of animals. Let’s consider that hunting required a lot more energy, time, and tool-making than gathering plant-based foods. Hunting game is preferred in areas where gathering was not the obvious and efficient choice, like the arctic circle. It seems that if you threw a few grubs into a raw foodists salad once in a while- they and fruitarians are more evolutionarily accurate than John Durant’s diet, which is based on European Ice Age and traditional Eskimo diets. In the majority of cases, the term hunter-gatherer should be flipped with the “gatherer” as being primary.
Future Wild Man, Steve Brill shows us what is actually edible in our local bioregions.
We can agree with these modern cave-men that incredible prejudice exists against pre-civilized peoples. Theorists, anthropologists and writers who have become more mainstream, like John Zerzan and Derrick Jensen and Daniel Quinn, deal with these issues and make the argument that, in fact, many pre-civilized peoples lead very leisurely and healthy lives full of play, sex, rest, and minimal “work”. Primitivism, and the study of pre-industrial and pre-civilized peoples often contradicts the idea that life was a perpetual struggle ending in early death. The idea that it was all struggle and pain is a modern rationalization as to why we chose to head towards civilization – we must have abandoned that lifestyle for good reason, no? But many anthropologists now ask whether it was a choice or was there a draconian drama that unfolded?
You’d think that someone who bases their ideal diet on the way things were thousands of years ago, would have some concern for the environment, since the earth was in quite a different state back then. Currently, raising animals for food is the greatest single cause of global warming and rainforest destruction. There are 300 million indigenous and non-indigenous people who live in forests and whose livelihoods and very homes are threatened by modern meat production. It’s ironic that the peoples whose lives are modeled in this diet are threatened because of the very foods it suggests we focus on. Unless of course, Durand makes the silly suggestion that there is enough wild game and grass-fed beef to feed the world a meat-centered diet. A plant-based diet easily resolves this problem.
Durant complains about all the vegetarian girls he meets being addicted to sugar. However, far from being a rare delicacy, honey contributed a substantial portion of the calories in many primitive diets. The Hazda of Tanzania, the Mbuti pygmies of the Congo, the Veddas or Wild Men of Sri Lanka, the Guayaka Indians of Paraguay, the Bushmen of South Africa and the Aborigines of Australia, all put a high value on honey and consumed it in large amounts. It appears that salty and sweet taste-buds are not, in fact, superfluous.[1] Furthermore, many American Indians consumed Maple Syrup and used it in preparing other foods.
Sorry, Durant! Star of Clan Of the Cave Bear, Daryl Hanna is a healthy and passionate vegan
John Durant’s fascination and promotion of the Cave Man Fad Diet seems due to the romanticized manliness associated with hunters and his personal desire to identify as a “real” man. However, what he has to say about the dangers of sedentary lifestyles, the benefits of play and exercise, the health hazards of industrialized food systems, dairy products and refined grains and sugars do offer serious legitimacy and are all things we should get on board with. Even attempting to re-learn what is edible in our local bioregions could be crucial to our survival as a species. But the preference for meat is riddled with prejudice, historical inaccuracy, ecological devastation, and outdated definitions of manhood.
We are so excited about Knowledge Cotton Apparel who make 100% organic cotton garments in our favorite nerd-chic styles! We adore their owl-pattern knits and their ivy-league stripes, and especially their shawl-collar cardigans. Steer clear of their down jackets, though and we’re in the process of finding out whether this Danish label’s buttons and tags are actually leather…so stand by! Keeping our fingers crossed.
Animal Minds.
WNYC’s Radiolab explores an ever-mysterious inquiry. When we gaze into the eyes of our beloved pets, can we ever really know what they might be thinking? Is it naive to assume they’re experiencing something close to human emotions? Or, on the contrary, is it ridiculous to assume that they AREN’T feeling something like that? In this hour of Radiolab, they explore what science can say about what goes on in the minds of animals.
Is New York next to phase out the cruelest forms of factory farming?
Our friend Jasmin Singer, Examiner.com’s official Animal Rights examiner, explores how this trend is sending shock-waves from the EU to several states in the US. Are veal crates, gestation crates, and battery cages on their way to becoming relics of torture in New York State? Read the article.
I know some of us (myself included) might be skeptical of yoga. As a somewhat cynical New Yorker – I think about hippies, crystals, incense and bad Om Tattoos the moment anyone mentions downward dog. However, contributor Nik Tyler takes us on his adventure as a open-minded newcomer into yoga-land. And guess what? It sounds pretty legit. – DB
Vol. 7: I am Nik’s clarity of thought, speech & intent.
by featured contributor Nik Tyler
Growing up in NYC, I was a pretty active kid and teenager. An avid baseball, soccer and tennis player; and I’d like to think if I had continued playing tennis passed my teen years, I might have one day been able to compete professionally. But somewhere between turning 18 and heading off to film school, my interests in sports declined and I found my attention geared towards activities that were less about running around or hitting a ball and more about holding a video camera and yelling “Action!”
The New York Press cover story is an outdated one. A love-lorn, former vegetarian, author Linnea Covington laments about her “meat-loving tendencies go[ing] dormant while in the throes of a romance with a veg-head“. In her attempts to analyze and validate her own taste for animal products by virtue of the “happy meat” trend (humane, free-range, etc), she fails to logically articulate any justification aside from bacon tastes good and, (as one of her subjects attests) “If I wanted to eat bacon, I would eat bacon”. As every parent of a teenager knows, there’s no arguing with flawless reason like that.
Most glaring is Covington’s personal disdain for vegetarians. She reduces Jonathan Safron Foer’s thorough and 300-page work, “Eating Animals“, to “eating meat is bad…toting his dogma…whining about Bourdain.” I wonder If she’s even read the book, as she later refers to animal advocates as “fundamentalist animal lovers” who are “preaching the benefits of this diet“. Her most extensive example of a vegetarian is Sylvester Graham who “took these theories to a religious level”. The point that Covington tries to make is that veganism and vegetarianism are like annoying religions beliefs based on personal choice, whose proselytizing followers are falling out of style. As another of her interviewees says, “Everyone who was eating tofu in 1992 is eating lamb now.”
But unlike faith or a personal belief, (or the reality that vegetarianism and veganism in the US are rapidly growing from 0.3% – 1% of the total population in 1994 to at least 3% in 2009 [6-8 million adults]) there is the huge inconvenience that animals have their own desires outside of what we choose to believe about them. One thing we know for sure is that in almost every single case, an animal will not willingly subject him or herself to the customs of the slaughterhouse. They want to live and they want to avoid suffering, and this is demonstrated in their own behavior, not in a person’s belief. If animal advocacy were a religion based in personal belief and blind faith, as opposed to a very real social justice, scientific, and advocacy movement, it would conveniently suit Covington’s argument.
Another flagrancy is Covington’s avoidance of the unmatched environmental benefits of limiting one’s meat intake. “Humane” or not, livestock are contributing the single greatest source of greenhouse gases in the world! But in the realm of short-term self-gratification, this does not factor in.
The vegetarian-cum-butchers who Covington interviews wear the “former vegetarian” label like a boy-scout patch: Oh you’re still a vegetarian?Been there, done that. The Meat-Hook, a trendy Williamsburg butcher shop that opened in late October of 2009, is owned by the former “indy-rock loving vegetarian” Tom Mylan, who is depicted in the article resting his hands on a pig’s head as he demonstrates the proper way to butcher a pig. Covington finds validation among these former-vegetarians who are OK with eating and butchering “happy” animals so long as they know what happened to the animal. But does “being OK with what happened to your meat” as The Shameless Carnivore author, Scott Gold says, justify it? Can you imagine a rapist standing over his victim and proclaiming, “You had a very happy life up until this point, and I want to let you know that I am totally at peace with what I am about to do to you.” It’s preposterous. The same can be said in any case of exploitation, because clarity is simply that. It does nothing for the victim.
Like a support group, the surge of meat-pride in a culture that is already overwhelmingly meat-centric is bizarre to say the least. What articles like this, and publications dedicated entirely to “meat-culture” reveals is that some meat-eaters who have learned more about meat production than the mainstream are searching for everything from a rationalization that suits their palate to a defiant stance against a percieved religious crusade. This Flesh Mob provides, as Covington says, seemingly “…guiltfree grub, and there’s no shortage of eaters buying into it.” That’s for sure. But if the “Humane” myth proves to be just that, and you’re still sick of the “outdated dogma” why not just get cheap Chinese takeout and screw it all? That is, as long as you’re OK with that.
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For more on this issue please check out my previous articles:
How does a discerning gentleman such as yourself get ready for the brand spanking newness of 2010? By getting squeaky clean, starting from the inside out.
No matter how many better-for-you-than-the-alternative-but-still-sweet-vegan goodies you scarfed down this holiday season, there’s hope for squeezing into those animal & eco friendly duds you got for Christmas or Hanukkah and feeling your overall fabulous (yet manly) self.
All of you gentlemen out there want pretty much the same things: to get rid of that spare tire or beer belly, look in the mirror and see clear, chiseled features, hear the women in your lives exclaim over how good you smell, alleviate depression (common with the lack of sunlight this time of year), feel sharper and stronger, have clear thoughts and increased stamina, as well as lower your risks for possible diseases and health problems in the future.
You know that to accomplish all of this, a detox is definitely required, and before you write them off as too expensive or complicated, think again, because a detox is something you can easily do at home with a bit of advice and some motivation. So here you go: Consider this a house call/kick-start from your very own personal detox specialist!
1. YOUR BODY IS A TEMPLE, SO CLEAN THE HOUSE! Literally, by getting rid of toxins from as many areas as you can. Consume, bathe, slather, sleep on, wear and generally surround yourself with as many organic and all-natural products as possible. Yes, it’s incredibly important to eat chemical-free foods (local and seasonal as well) but don’t forget about your cleaning products, or the sheets you spend 1/3 of your time in (maybe more if your new clean habits increase your stamina and suddenly magnetic attractiveness!), or the shaving lotion, cologne and toothpaste you use. Our skin is our largest organ and if toxins are going on it, you can rest assured they’re doing harm in your body as well.
2. LOVE THOSE GREENS. There was a reason Olive Oyl was enamored with Popeye. He loved his green vegetables and had the muscles to prove it. Dark green vegetables are powerhouses of energy, vitamins, minerals, mood-boosters, immune system strengtheners, weight loss tools, and basic overall miracle workers. They are tools that no man should be without on the road to optimal health and vitality. Raw, juiced, steamed, sauteed, blended; however you eat them, just make sure you are!
3. BE THE STRONG, SEXY, SILENT TYPE. It works for rugged cowboys, and it will work in more ways than one for you. When you find time to be quiet as often as you can throughout the day, you are alleviating the stress and anxiety that builds up from normal everyday life. Stilling the mind works the connection between mind and body and when your mind is calm, quiet, strong and regenerated, your body immediately follows. Nothing fancy, just a few minutes a day, so instead of zoning out in front of the tv, lie, sit or stand with your eyes half lowered or closed and let your thoughts simply fall away without control or stress or pressure to do anything in that moment except BE. When you’re called out for being lazy and unmotivated, invite whoever it is to join you and raise the peaceful love vibration of the world, so suddenly you have entirely universal and unselfish results for what started out as sort of a self-serving act! Oh and don’t forget your beauty sleep either. . . most of us need roughly 8 hours to have the best skin, metabolism, immunity and overall mood possible. Winter is the perfect time to become a bit more bear-like and hibernate more than usual, it actually harms our health to fight nature as we do, working like crazy even when the sun is telling us to slow down a bit.
4. LOSE/HEAL YOUR GUT. When you work to promote optimal gastrointestinal health, you simultaneously streamline your size as well. . . a healthy gut is usually not a bloated and extended one so take a daily probiotic, eat lots of fermented foods (miso, sauerkraut, spicy kimchi, kombucha), and make sure you’re staying well hydrated with plenty of water. Also don’t forget to move around. Walk, run, stretch, lift, swim, climb stairs, play with your kids, play pickup ball games, have sex, cook a meal, hug everyone. . .any kind of movement benefits you in more ways than one, between losing extra weight, acting like happy pills, and making human connections.
So what are you waiting for? Get busy cleaning up your act this January. . . and get your sexy back.
Dr. Alejandro Junger lives in New York City, where he practices at the Eleven Eleven Wellness Center and at the Akasha Center in LA. He is the Director of Integrative Medicine at Lenox Hill Hospital.
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