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I have a confession to make. I used to be different...quite a bit different to the person I am today. What makes writing this blog so powerful for me personally is that every day I am forced to remember the person I used to be, the choices I made and the beliefs I upheld, even when others shared good reasons with me to choose and believe otherwise. It is very hard to write this post, because no one likes to be seen in a bad light, but I believe the grief I feel in sharing how I used to be is less important than the message of this post. So I will do this, I will share how I used to be, and what happened to change me, and why I cannot ever return to the person I used to be.
Six years ago...[in 2005]
I wore fur. I didn't think about the fact that an animal needed their fur to live, and that for me to wear it, meant its death. I saw it as something pretty in Pucci that would look good on me and make others admire me. Not only did I wear fur, I admired garments with fur on them, I enjoyed the feel of the fur and saw wearing fur as a sign of success and wealth. While I worked at a private equity firm, I met a girl there who was vegan. When we discussed the wearing of fur, to her credit she tried to help me understand where I was missing the point, and even though I began to see how it was wrong to wear fur, I couldn't get past the fact that wearing fur made me feel good. So I continued to wear it.
I was invited to a charity gala in London and the theme was orchids and jewels. On the way to the salon I purchased a beautiful orchid plant fully blooming with white orchids, once I was in the chair I had all the blooms cut off and placed in my swept-up hair. When we were done, the stylist asked what I wished to do with the plant, still beautiful and green in its own right. I barely glanced at it as I walked out saying, 'Throw it away, it's useless now.'
I bought shoes made of python skin and iguana skin, mildly amused by the thought that creatures I then found so ugly could be made into such beautiful things - as though those reptiles' sole purpose on earth was to be used for making 'better things'. The iguana skin shoes, dyed bright orange, were featured in Vogue and cost more than a laptop, and in those days a laptop cost considerably more than they do now. I wore them twice.
I ate meat every day. Even the occasional fast food meal, when the craving arose. I tried kangaroo, buffalo and game pie, which I recall had things like pheasant, deer, and hare in it. I heard about things like battery farms for eggs, and poor farming conditions for livestock, but I believed I was only one person and could not make a difference anyhow, so bought what I liked and felt guilt-free. I congratulated myself for drawing the line at veal and lamb. It felt so good to be a paragon of animal awareness with my refusal to eat baby animals. I even went hungry on a trans-Atlantic flight since they ran out of the chicken option and only had lamb left. I judgementally asked myself How many others would do as much? My feeling of righteousness kept me full until we landed.
I was vain, shallow, conceited and selfish. To my mind everything that was for sale was there as an item to make one feel good about oneself, there was no need to ponder the issue any further. I never thought - not once - about where those items came from, or of the cost of life, be it human or animal, that was involved in bringing it to the shelves before my eyes. It simply never occurred to me. Not once. It is very hard to write these things. To remember who I used to be. How I used to be.
