When I’m sitting at a restaurant, ready to dig into a mouth-watering tofu dish while everyone else at the table is eating a steak, it’s is very easy to become the object of ridicule and alienation. There are tons of people who come up to me and ask what I’m eating. I don’t usually get annoyed because if I unknowingly saw someone eating a white block, I’d ask as what the hell they were eating as well.
But most of the time, I’ll be encountered with a few smartass carnivores who think they know everything. The questions I get are absolutely ridiculous and most of the time, unintelligent. These are just a few:
“If you were on an island with nothing to eat but lettuce and pig, which would you eat?”
“What if you become anemic? You know I became anemic from being a vegetarian?”
“Did you know that you can become blind from not eating meat?”
When I get these questions, I feel offended due to the level of stupidity of the questions. It makes me feel like not only do they think I’m weird (which is fine), I feel like they think I’m dumb or uneducated on nutrition for making this lifestyle decision. Most of the time, there are no other vegans or vegetarians around me, so I get ganged up on by four or five different people who will not let me get a word in. It’s extremely frustrating to me especially since some meat eaters won’t let their arguments go past that monotonous catchphrase, “But it tastes so good”, while I try in vain to educate them about veganism and how their meat eating not only affects their bodies, but the environment as well.
Another situation that I absolutely dread, are family gatherings. Not birthday parties or anything of that nature, but Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. These situations actually make me wish I was a meat eater. No, not because the delicious odor of a rotting carcass being sliced and mutilated on a plate before me is oh so irresistible, but because my family ridicules and harasses me. This is different from anyone else I know coming up to me and telling me I’m not getting enough protein, but this is my family, and they don’t even approve. Of course, I have those loving aunts who tell me time and time again, “I wish I was as strong as you.” while picking at their pork chops. Then of course, I have the conservative, rich uncles who think I’m too radical. "Angelica, sometimes going to an extreme is not the answer, in reality, the answer lies somewhere in the middle.", my family members would say to me. It's really difficult sometimes to deal with being an outcast at family parties just because of my lifestyle as a vegan. However, I do not seek the approval of anyone and I will not change that.
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