As this began to sink in, my obsession with Smoochies began to fade out. I was soon enmeshed in a world that was not only full of passion and purpose, but absolutely delectable. Turned out, vegan ice cream in all its incarnations was much more delicious than Smoochies. I should know: Throughout the next few years, I ate enough of it to write an encyclopedia about my findings.
I dove into veganism frantically and maniacally. I was equally obsessed with the reasons behind embracing it—which I saw as constituting a moral imperative—as I was with the food that defined it. The New York City subway suddenly became an elaborate web that unified the must-have vegan cupcake on the Lower East Side with the not-to-be-missed vegan “chicken” sandwich in Harlem, with the you’ve-got-to-try-it-to-believe-it vegan Butterfinger shake in Williamsburg, with the pinch-me-now vegan panini in Soho. I knew about all of it, intimately.
The “vegetarian” label that I had somewhat arbitrarily and thoughtlessly slapped on myself five years prior finally did what I’d initially intended—it became part of my true identity. It was veganism and animal rights that set me on the path to finding healing and purpose—opening up my love life (in my experience, vegans do have better sex), my social life (we’re a barrel of laughs—sometimes we even talk about things besides castration without anesthesia), my taste buds (who knew that Indian food is so orgasmic?), and my life’s mission (why be an unpaid actor when you can be an unpaid activist?).
It wasn’t enough for me to just be vegan or to just be a part-time activist. I wanted this to be my entire life. It had never occurred to me that I would crave something as badly as I had craved being onstage, and yet my new life’s mission—to dedicate myself to changing the world for animals—felt all encompassing, bigger than anything else. When I learned the truth about animals, I was outraged, I was furious, and I was on fire—and the last thing I was going to do was shut up about it anytime soon.
Nor was I going to stop eating vegan cupcakes anytime soon. Not only did this new stage of my life bring me into a world of passionate social justice activists, but it also brought me into a world of unending food. Needless to say, one thing that didn’t happen when I went vegan was losing weight. In fact it was just the opposite.
TWELVE
opinions were for thin, beautiful women
Becoming vegan and diving into a world that meant so much to me—animal advocacy—was the best decision I ever made. It gave me crystal-clear vision and purpose. How could I learn what was happening to animals behind closed doors and not do something about it? It was also a complete breath of fresh air to be working for something that wasn’t all about me, unlike the work I had been doing (or trying to do) as an actor.
However, though my shift to embracing veganism and animal rights did radically alter my relationship with the world, as well as my relationship with food, it did not succeed in getting me to slow down or reevaluate my consumption habits. I was as mindlessly ravenous as I had ever been, and I justified my enormous appetite by telling myself that it was for the animals.
After seeing the film that compelled me to commit myself to helping animals, I decided to put all the drive that I had formerly channeled into auditioning into finding a job in animal rights. With the encouragement of Marisa and of her boss at the time, Maxine, within just a few weeks of becoming vegan, I went down to Norfolk, Virginia, to spend a week volunteering for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). If that experience doesn’t thrust you full-force into the world of animal rights, nothing will. I see now that getting me a short-term gig with PETA was Maxine’s and Marisa’s insurance that I would be a keeper, and it worked.
Unlike the atmosphere at any animal rights job I’ve had since, the PETA offices had a corporate feel to them (that is, except for the many marvelous dogs and cats wandering around), complete with dozens of tiny cubicle workspaces, one of which was assigned to me for the week. Familiarizing myself with the antivivisection (animal testing) campaign I would be helping out with, I sat at my desk and watched video after video of chemicals burning away the cornea of a rabbit’s eye, caged mice and dogs being force-fed large doses of everything from pharmaceuticals to household cleaners, puppies being bred to have degenerative eye diseases that culminated in blindness, and baby monkeys undergoing “maternal deprivation experiments,” being pulled from their mothers in order to induce psychological trauma. As I sat in my cubicle watching a rabbit writhing as her newly shaven skin was burned with chemicals, I was incensed. I stood up to peek into others’ cubicles and see if they, too, were fuming—or at least weeping. But what I saw instead was everyone typing away, working diligently—not unaffected (they had devoted their lives to work at PETA, after all), but simply determined to make a change.
Now that I had found my purpose, I saw no other choice but to be all in. And I was surprisingly successful. When I returned to New York after my short but life-changing week at PETA, I became obsessed with finding a job that was in any way centered around raising consciousness about animals. There weren’t many, but there were a few, and so in the course of the next few years, I threw myself fully into no- or low-paying jobs, such as being an assistant at a small animal rights organization where I put together vegan starter kits for people curious about ditching meat; stocking vegan shoes in the basement of a vegan shoe store; and writing profile pieces, restaurant reviews, and eventually feature articles for a popular vegan lifestyle magazine. Eventually I even landed a position as the campaigns manager for a national farmed animal protection organization, Farm Sanctuary. There, I worked hard—extremely hard—all while I was fostering a side career as a freelance writer focusing on pro-animal, activist, and vegan-related stories.
I threw myself into this work with passion that left little time or energy for anything else. For me, controlling my food intake—even thinking about my food intake—was like a full-time job in and of itself, and I just didn’t have the wherewithal. I also had a nifty rationalization that I hadn’t had before: Limiting or scrutinizing my food felt like punishment, and unfair to do, when so much of my life was dedicated to helping others. So I figured eating to excess was my right.
It’s become a bit of a cliché to associate veganism with thinness. The media certainly perpetuate this myth, constantly glorifying celebrities who jump on the vegan bandwagon for a few weeks in order to shed a few pounds and gain a few headlines. People also tend to think that vegans are all health freaks, existing on little more than leafy greens and steamed tofu. Though, more and more, the world is now catching on to the fact that vegan food can be as decadent, rich, plentiful, and delicious as animal-based meals, for the first few years of my veganism, the sugary, salty, and oftentimes fried food on my plate would have bashed anyone’s preconception of vegan as a synonym for healthy.
The fact that vegan food can be so rich and decadent is a wonderful thing, since it means that people can leave the animals off their plates, and get them out of the factory farms, without sacrificing deliciousness. But—as with anything that is rich and decadent—vegan junk foods should probably not be consumed voraciously and monomaniacally—which was exactly how I was consuming them. In fact, my transition to veganism wound up being seamless—junk foods, once again, were central to my diet. There is literally a vegan version of every animal product out there, and so when I became vegan, I simply replaced the animal-based products I had been consuming with their vegan counterparts. While these foods are a whole lot healthier than the nonvegan versions (no cholesterol, for one thing), they hardly fit the myth that veganism, in and of itself, will make you healthy.
So, while the rest of the world may have assumed that going vegan would mean that my plate would be packed with nutrient-rich, health-promoting foods, like an abundance of vegetables, fruits, and other whole foods, sadly, that was not the case. Instead, I replaced my entire extra-cheese pizza (which was for me, and me alone) with the vegan version (I still did not share)—and even threw on a hefty supply of so
y-based pepperoni for a kick. I ate salad-bowl-sized servings of macaroni smothered in cheese made out of cashews (which was unbelievably rich, creamy, and delicious) rather than cheese made out of cow’s milk, which I was finally over, for good. Tofu scramble with soy cheese replaced my cow’s-cheese omelets, and I’d be sure to have an everything bagel on the side with more than just a schmear of Tofutti cream cheese, plus a second side of fried potato wedges with lots of ketchup. Not only was my plate obviously devoid of vegetables and fruit, but in fact I never ate them at all.
But what really did me in was dessert. When I became a vegan, I was truly blown away (and still am) by the creamy, rich scrumptiousness of vegan baked goods. To say they taste the same as nonvegan baked goods would indeed be inaccurate. In my (vast, vast) experience, vegan desserts, almost across the board, far surpass nonvegan ones. (This fact has been corroborated by my opinionated brother, who is my reliable “meat-and-potatoes-loving” gauge and is unwaveringly truthful about what works—and, even more loudly, what doesn’t work—vis-à-vis vegan food.) Of course, you can have crappy-tasting food of any kind—vegan or not—and not all bakers or chefs are created equal, but my expertise in vegan desserts (and, trust me, I should have an honorary PhD in this subject) proves that, most of the time, they far outweigh (so to speak) the dairy- and egg-laden counterparts. I was in a sugary, creamy vegan heaven.
Or was it hell? I felt as fully out of control and addicted to food as I ever had. I am by no means complaining about the fact that when I went vegan, I had the ability and privilege to fill my fridge and tummy with tall slices of the legendary-among-vegans Peanut Butter Bomb cake from the Bethlehem, Pennsylvania–based Vegan Treats, or with the plentiful variety of vegan donuts, pies, chocolate truffles, ice cream sundaes, or gooey brownies that seemed to blanket New York City with a sugary sweet glaze. These are glorious foods and should be savored—as should the fact that deliciousness and satiety can just as easily (and affordably, and accessibly) come from products that are entirely free of animal suffering.
The issue for me was that I was enslaved by food—both physically and emotionally. So as I replaced my “regular” pizza with vegan pizza and my Smoochies with the cashew-based mint brownie sundae from New York City’s premier raw restaurant at that time, Pure Food and Wine—while consuming virtually no vegetables—I also deluded myself that just by being vegan, not only was I taking care of the animals and saving them from abuse, but I was taking care of myself.
So, as I busied myself, round the clock, with my soul-satisfying work of changing the world for animals—and as I fed myself solely on processed junk food—the shape and size I came in was bigger than ever. And it kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Though my newfound work had given me the peace that comes with knowing that you have found your place in the world, my eating and my size gave me no peace at all. On the contrary, I thought about my body almost as obsessively as I thought about how the hell I was going to liberate all the animals in the world.
—
I was twenty-seven. I was at a friend’s clothing swap—she called them “Bitch Swaps,” which, radical feminist that I fancied myself to be, I found offensive—at her spacious Upper West Side high-rise. Many of her beautiful friends worked in show business or in fashion. They looked it, too. I was so aware of how fat I was, how my button-down shirt was pulling across my chest, causing a space in between the first and second buttons. You could see my bra through it—and I wasn’t even wearing a nice one that day. I was mortified and, reverting to defenses I learned in high school, I was hoping that I had successfully created a distraction from my body by wearing extra eye makeup. I sat cross-legged on the floor, my arms in a knot across my chest, covering my wardrobe snafu.
The apartment smelled like Amy’s vegan pizza, my favorite frozen variety, but I was too embarrassed to eat in front of all these skinny women who seemed to inhabit their bodies so effortlessly. I hated them—even though the better part of me knew that I shouldn’t, that it was unfounded. I wasn’t in high school anymore, and I didn’t need to simply assume that these women were against me. I recognized the irony of feeling sure they were judging me and therefore judging them first. How were my own preconceptions of them any better than what I imagined about their preconceptions of me? Wasn’t I just as much—perhaps even more—at fault?
I battled between feeling self-conscious and self-obsessed, knowing I was absolutely being paranoid. “It’s not all about you,” I’d recite to myself in my head. Besides, many of the women at this party were, in fact, sweet. One of them—a redhead with legs that ended at her earlobes—plunked down beside me. “Cool eye makeup!” she said genuinely, beaming.
I existed in a haze between self-confident and shattered. I spent my days working hard fighting for animal rights, and my work didn’t go unnoticed. But each morning, as I caked on my eyeliner, as I put on just one more extra-glittery barrette, I felt myself sinking further into myself—into my fat rolls and my psyche, my bulbous stomach and my splintered self-esteem. Ironically, I learned how to digest the truth about animals, yet I felt traumatized by the truth about me. I was fat, and I spent every second that I wasn’t fighting for animal rights convincing myself that I wasn’t.
It was time to go around the room, show-and-tell style, displaying what we’d brought, seeing who wanted dibs on our stuff. I feigned excitement. I widened my eyes and pursed my lips in fake anticipation. Unless one of these women had recently lost half of her body weight and had some plus-size sweaters she was ready to re-home, I was confident that this was going to be an awkward afternoon for me, at best.
The first woman went. Size zero jeans. Hardly plus size, unless you’re looking to outfit a Barbie doll. She got a taker, and lots of disappointed women were jealous because they weren’t quick enough to raise their hands. Next, her size four jeans—“from my fat days,” she said, explaining. I heard cutesy giggles. I giggled, too, because screaming at the top of my lungs to the point where my blood would boil and spill out through my pores all over my friend’s expensive carpeting would have been inappropriate.
I discreetly eyed the balcony. I considered taking up smoking on the spot so that I could even momentarily escape this shindig, this mental ward, this cool kids club that I hated and wanted so desperately to join, all at the same time. All the while I smiled, trying to figure out whether I should pretend that it was cute to call your size four days your fat days, or whether smiling at that made fat-me look ridiculous. In reality, I wasn’t even born a size four. Suddenly my TM’s face appeared in my mind’s eye, and I had the nauseating suspicion that she’d really dig this soiree. (Though she wouldn’t have eaten the pizza, either.)
Big red hoop earrings were next. A few of the women, well-intentioned and kind, looked at me eagerly. One said, “Ooooh, give those to Jazz! They’d look so great with her black hair!” The others agreed enthusiastically—too enthusiastically. They were trying to ignore the elephant in the room—the elephant being me.
I exuberantly took the hoop earrings. “Oh, yay!” I proclaimed. Throughout the evening, I also took the guitar-shaped makeup bag, the silver and pink necklace that said Fiercely Femme, and the barely used turquoise eye shadow, which my friend accurately pointed out was just my speed. Unlike the clothes that got passed around from one thin person to the next, there was no question that the things I took home that night would fit me just fine. These items hit just the right note of ostentatious, too—a style I had carried on, in modified fashion, since high school, since I somehow felt that it effectively masked the parts of me I didn’t want to show.
Not the earrings, though. I had never worn hoop earrings in my life. I just didn’t like them. The ones I took that day, just so I could pretend I was excited about something, would be no exception. They would, however, remain in my jewelry box for years—a reminder of what those other women were, and what I was not.
—
The thing is, I loved the
way I ate, and I had no desire to change that. It wasn’t only absolutely delicious, it felt virtuous. And, whereas before I was eating the same few things (cheeseburgers when I was a meat eater, omelets and pizza when I was a vegetarian), becoming a vegan made me so much more aware of the possibilities of food and, as a result, expanded my culinary world in spades. Entire cuisines were opened up to me—Indian, Moroccan, Ethiopian, Japanese. And, aside from cuisines like those that were inherently vegan friendly, many of my comrades and acquaintances were totally hell-bent on “veganizing” traditional meat and dairy dishes, so I also regularly sampled more than my share of new plant-based cheeses, milks, specialty items like Faux Gras (replacing foie gras), and any of the barrage of vegan meats that were constantly hitting the shelves. To me, as a new vegan, food was no longer just my escape or distraction—it was representative of a worldview shared by like-minded folks all over the world. It brought me into a community that fought, against all odds, for animal rights, and then, as a collective reward, ate abundantly and purposefully. I loved that.
In fact, when I became vegan, I became a passionate foodie, and plant-based eating—in addition to becoming a moral imperative for me—also became a fantastic hobby. This happens to a lot of people who go vegan—it’s an entire subculture of must-have yumminess. Tasting the most recent vegan products, and visiting the newest vegan restaurants or vegan-friendly ones, is just part of the whole scene. There are multiple websites and mobile apps (like HappyCow.net) that make searching for vegan food pretty much a no-brainer.
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