Veganism and intersectionality with other issues: (i) body shaming

Veganism as a movement is evolving all the time and recently I have noticed more of an emphasis on intersectionality with other social justice issues in the vegan media. I am planning to write a few small, succinct posts to rant about my take on these issues if that is okay with you readers.

Lets start with one that comes up alot in food blogging....

Body shaming
I talked a little bit about this already in my 'Guilt-Free Food' post, but over the last couple of years I have noticed the idea of 'health-food veganism' becoming more prolific. Campaigns promoting veganism on these grounds always say one thing- that you will loose weight. This is based on the old adage that there is only one acceptable way to be and that is thin. Healthy people come in all different shapes and sizes and the articles I have read recently about the discrimination people have experienced within the vegan movement because they are overweight are absolutely heart-breaking. This is the antithesis of what veganism stands for. Why would anyone want to join a movement that discriminates against them and tells them that they do not have the right body-shape to advocate for animals? Animal advocacy is about ethics and social justice, not conforming to the conventions of attractiveness.

This also branches out into feminism as pressure to be thin is mainly aimed at woman and is perpetuated by groups promoting animal causes such as PETA (think thin, conventionally attractive lettuce ladies, as so eloquently highlighted by Corey Lee Wren in her Feminspire piece 'Edible Women: Models Dressed as Food Will Never Be Activism'.)

I simply do not support animal welfare/rights groups that use or have used body-shaming to promote vegetarian and vegan diets, such as PCRM and of course the behemoth, PETA. I understand the urge to equate veganism with health, both because of lingering vestiges of old vegan stereotypes and also because promises of health and thinness sell better than ethics. Organisations such as these claim that they using these unsettling cultural norms to get through to people who wouldn't be interested in an animal rights message (the argument put forward by the author of Skinny Bitch), but I say that using human oppression to fight animal oppression is contradictory and just plain wrong. We need to promote veganism using logic and reason, not by offering it up as a quick-fix for every self-esteem issue.

While definitely less prolific, I have also noted under the category of body shaming instances of comparing wearing the fur of non-human animals to women not shaving their body hair, such as the 'Gentlemen prefer Fur-free blondes', 'Wear bare skin not fur' and 'Fur Trim: Unattractive' ads highlighted in this post. If equating a woman who chooses not to shave with someone who supports killing non-human animals for fur isn't body shaming then I don't know what is.

Further reading on this topic:

'Vegans, I need to talk to you' on the Fat Girl Posing blog (2011)
Issue 7 of T.O.F.U magazine is dedicated to vegans and body image (Summer 2013)
'People aren't vegan because of YOUR body' on the Thinking Vegan blog (June 2013)