Living Vegan For Dummies - Alexandra Jamieson [73]
Chapter 11
Beyond Food: Embracing the Whole Vegan Lifestyle
In This Chapter
Finding vegan clothes and shoes
Making sure your health and beauty products are animal-free
Veganizing your home
Some vegans say they make a difference three times a day — by eating vegan at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. But being vegan isn’t just about food — it’s a whole lifestyle. Living as a vegan requires a deeper examination of your entire life, from your shirt and shampoo to your furniture and laundry detergent. Everything you do, use, and buy is another chance to practice your vegan ethics in a very real way.
The basic premise of being vegan is that it’s a lifestyle that doesn’t abuse or use animals in any way. This means that using animals as food, clothing, furniture, or ingredients is a no-no. Vegans aspire to avoid using animal products of any kind — period.
You don’t have to explain yourself to anyone, but vegan living isn’t the norm, and it generally requires more thought than nonvegan living when it comes to just about every aspect of your life. At first it may seem overwhelming, and you may feel like you have to do everything at once and change every bit of your daily experience. No worries! This is a big transition, and no one expects you to do everything right, or right now.
This chapter leads you through the other areas of vegan living that may be less familiar than what you’re going to eat for lunch. You need to develop a new vocabulary regarding ingredients and materials. As you discover and explore different areas, you’ll become an expert in choosing products that fit the spirit of being vegan.
Fashionably Compassionate: Animal-Free Clothing and Footwear
Animal products and skins are very common in clothing manufacturing — you’d be surprised at how many of these items you probably already own. Leather, down, suede, fur, feathers, sheep’s wool, silk, shells, angora rabbit fur, and other animal skins are all produced by killing or confining animals, and these materials aren’t considered vegan. (Because leather and fur require the killing of an animal outright, they shouldn’t even be considered vegetarian.)
Clothing made from animal materials comes at a high price to other living creatures, whether you buy it at a discount mall or a high-priced designer boutique. Vegan fashions have evolved quickly over the last decade, and designers now create current looks in cruelty-free fabrics and materials. Some are even at the forefront of the fashion trends, and these products are getting easier to find every year.
Where to buy the latest looks
Vegan fashionistas can rejoice in this modern age of clothing design and accessibility. Buying vegan clothing is much easier these days thanks to the Internet, forward-thinking designers, and those old standbys — discount stores. Whether you’re looking for daily wear, shoes, bags, belts, formal wear, party clothes, wallets, accessories, coats, or faux apparel, you should have no trouble finding a variety of animal-friendly, cruelty-free options:
Athletic shoes: You can find vegan-friendly athletic shoes by searching the stores and Web sites of Zappos and New Balance for running and walking shoes, Airwalk and Burton for snowboard boots, and Vans for skateboard shoes. You can order vegan ballet shoes from Cynthia King Dance Studio in Brooklyn, New York. Your vegan shoes can be a walking billboard for cruelty-free ethics!
Daily wear/casual clothing: You can put together vegan outfits on the cheap and on the fly by shopping at discount clothing stores like Target, Wal-Mart, and Payless Shoes, which offer shoes, bags, and belts created from man-made materials — usually plastic, hemp, canvas, or “pleather.” The online store Alloy has current bag, belt, and shoe designs for teens and women.
Because living “green” is often synonymous with