Last fall, I decided to go vegan.
I had been vegetarian since the fall of my freshman year of college. I took the leap to being vegetarian for a few different reasons: I’m passionate about environmental conservation, I don’t mind tofu, I was on a major health kick, and I accidentally took a literature class that was actually an animal rights activism seminar and it kind of made me never want to see a chicken tender ever again.
I finally made the switch to a full-blown plant-based diet for much of the same reasons. I also found out I was lactose intolerant, which, for the record, can we talk about how late-onset lactose intolerance is spreading like the plague, and because I almost felt like a hypocrite whenever the ethical issues behind my reasoning surfaced in conversation. I realized I wasn’t really fully committed. But, even after partially making the switch, the thought of veganism petrified me. At first, it was more of a how-will-I-live-without-mac-and-cheese kind of fear that vanished as soon as I discovered vegan cheese exists and is actually delicious. But something was still holding me back.
It took actually crossing the line and referring to myself as vegan to see why.
The day I finally sat down and told myself and others, “hey, I’m vegan now,” everything changed. My friends started being more cautious about what they ate and said around me. My grandma seemed offended I only ate mashed potatoes without butter and fruit salad on Thanksgiving. The response was rarely positive. People were annoyed. People were actually offended I was going to such extremes for something they knew I was passionate about. The worst was when people would ask why I was vegan, and when I tried to very politely and honestly educate them about how much of global warming can be attributed to the meat industry and also animals are cute and I don’t feel okay eating cute things, nobody really listened and instead just told me to stop preaching to them.
It got so much worse when I began to slip up.
Being vegan isn’t easy. Anyone who says differently is lying. It’s not about control for me – if there’s an option for tofu scramble versus a chicken sandwich, I’ll go with the tofu a thousand times over – it’s about the lack of variety. Especially in my hometown, vegan options are extremely limited and typically more expensive. Whenever I go home, I have two choices: eat my mom’s homemade spaghetti pie with real cheese I’ve been dreaming of since the last time I was home, or eat the same frozen veggie burger I eat almost every single day at school. I know a handful of vegans and can’t name a single one who doesn’t cheat every once in a while, mostly unintentionally.
When the people who knew I was vegan saw me in these rare moment of flexibility, the backlash was, unsurprisingly, extreme. “I thought the dairy industry was killing the planet? How dare you eat that tiny piece of cheese, you hypocrite?” “You forgot to order your pad thai without eggs? Think about the poor chickens!”
Not only was it incredibly annoying, but it hurt. It made me feel like I couldn’t call myself vegan anymore. It got to the point where I didn’t even want to because I was scared of going out to eat with friends and feeling pressured to get the only vegan hummus plate on the menu when I don’t even really like hummus. It would’ve been so much easier to just quit and go back to vegetarian – but then, I’d just feel like a failure.
And then, one glorious day, I had an epiphany: who cares.
I’m trying my best, right? I eat vegan 90% of the time and only cheat if I truly feel like I don’t have another option. I only use cruelty-free cosmetics. I still tell people I’m vegan, but I’ve added a single word in front of it: flexible vegan.
If you couldn’t guess, the backlash from this is almost as awful – from both carnivores and vegans alike. But, at this point, I don’t even listen anymore. I’m trying. I’m making a difference.
Anyone who opts for a veggie burger over a real one on one single occasion is making a difference. Anyone who’s trying to be vegan but fails almost all the time is making a difference.
For the most part, labels do much more harm than good. Just be who you are, as cliché as it sounds. Veganism is just one example – there are so many more relevant labels out there. If you decide to label yourself as something, as I have, more power to you. But, as if I’ve learned, there’s nothing wrong with refraining from using silly words to describe yourself. Just let yourself find happiness in how you define yourself, and most importantly, don’t let others tell you what you can and can’t be.
Images courtesy of verdict.co.uk and foodrevolution.org