5 Things Only Vegans Notice

Apr 26, 2021

"There are none so blind as those who will not see."
-John Heywood

1. People Always Talk About Food

Like they can't help themselves, people always mention food when around vegans. Is it possible for them to talk about anything else? They just have to go into details about some new recipe they made or the delicious meal they had at a restaurant in town. I'm not sure if this is normal for people to do or if it's a defense mechanism done when in close proximity to a vegan, but it's like every time you have a conversation with a non-vegan, they start drooling over all the animal products they've eaten recently.

2. Food in Film

Before going vegan, you never noticed that your favorite movie had a completely superfluous three-second closeup on frying eggs as the protagonist is preparing breakfast. (And these characters are all chugging glasses of milk -- you know it's dairy because there's always a cow on the carton, which is placed in frame, of course -- with breakfast, lunch, and dinner.) When you were bingeing a new show, you probably saw a neighborhood barbecue with lingering shots of meat sizzling on the grill. Or maybe you've felt uncomfortable as the family patriarch in a sitcom carves the Thanksgiving turkey, providing a sensual slo-mo as the knife slides through the flesh.

There's a certain "male gaze" -- the theory that media is produced mostly by and for men, leading to the objectification of women, and the female body in particular, in everything ranging from movies to marketing -- quality in meat's portrayal on screen. Remember that every scene, every shot, of a film is carefully planned; nothing is there by accident. The filmmakers intentionally choose to show these things to develop the plot or to arouse some kind of feeling in the audience. So, what are they trying to evoke when showing these images?

Live Animals

Similar to food, live animals are often used in film even when their presence is completely superfluous to the story. There's a reason why companion animals are always the first ones offed in horror movies. Their lives are expendable, but it indicates spooky things are going to happen, as if the audience didn't already know that when choosing to watch a horror movie. (I'm still trying to figure out how a ghost-witch killed the family dog in The Conjuring when she couldn't kill any human character and when her sole aim in the afterlife is to make mothers murder their children. Then, the dog is never mentioned again; it served absolutely no purpose other than to make me angry.) When animals aren't present simply to be killed, they're usually meant to serve as metaphors, something I'd like to think humans are creative enough to do without using living creatures, like the birds being freed in Bird Box.

3. Vegan/Vegetarian Portrayal on Screen

When vegetarians or vegans are portrayed in film, they're almost never the protagonist. When they are, though, it's usually to put them in an uncomfortable situation (i.e., doing something that violates their morals). Whether it's comedy or horror, carnists love to see us squirm, like making Phoebe fall in love with the comfort of a fur coat in Friends or Justine of Raw becoming addicted to bingeing raw flesh (at veterinary school no less) or Drag Me to Hell's Christine performing an animal sacrifice on her kitten. The topic is treated as a joke, and the people who believe in it are the vessels that carry the comedy to carnist viewers.

4. The Abundance of Advertising

This is probably the most obvious thing on this list, but non-vegans don't truly notice how marketing for animal products (and everything, really) is around them virtually all the time. Every time you go on social media or watch a YouTube video or turn on the television, there are ads ingraining the normalization of animal exploitation. When you drive down the highway, there are fast-food chains at every exit and billboards almost screaming at you to come eat their animals. It's like 1984, but instead of Big Brother watching, animal oppression is always staring at you, watching you leave, begging you to come back.

5. What's Hidden in Labels

Once you go vegan, you, perhaps for the first time in your life, have to read labels on food, and that's when you realize that animal products are hidden in everything, often camouflaged under innocuous names like "gelatin" or "whey protein" or "confectioner's glaze." Before veganism, you never had to pay attention to the oppression hidden in each product on the shelf, but now you can't help but see it everywhere.

be conscious, be kind, be vegan