RSSThis Week in Macleans March 29 2010: Forced To Get Real
March 22, 2010
They said that a recession would have a good side. We’d walk more, drive less, live more simply.
Unless their situation was dire, did anyone really trim their lifestyle?
Maximum natural
Macleans magazine, a Canadian news weekly, had an article on the return of minimalism in fashion in the Business section.
AND
on allowing your natural curly hair texture in “The Lost Art Of Curl Maintenance”. Is knowing how to cut this hair a lost art? I know many women who would say YES!! The confidence of feeling natural in your own skin is freedom from the fight.
The times must be a’changing when Macleans devotes space to this.
Minimalism, they say, is the natural outcome of an economic downturn. Fashion houses are hearing the toll of the credit (or debit) bell. They have to scale down the extravagance for awhile. I for one will enjoy it while it’s given.
Clothing, hair, makeup, as art is great. The problem is that it trickles down till we feel inadequate if we don’t mimic it in some way, instead of seeing it for the costume that it is. When women can’t breathe, move, eat, or walk, we’ve gone back 200 years, haven’t we? Gwyneth might look glam when she needs help to get down 3 stairs, but we are not her.
Scope on the Meatless question
Best was the article “Save The Planet, Stop Eating Meat”. Issues come along that we agree we should have a better grasp of, and this is one. Toyota’s problems will go away, and whether I understand the Middle East or not will make no difference.
The Meatless issue impacts the planet’s health, but yours and mine in a very immediate way too. Micheal Pollan’s book The Omnivore’s Dilemma changed my life (did you know that he wrote a version for teens? I didn’t till now), and I will find time to read In Defense Of Food. I know that animal welfare and lakes of manure and CO2 emissions matter, but when the scale of the problem becomes too pervasive, I feel a bit hopeless. I get that each of us plays a role, but it’s easier for Simon Cowell and Ellen to be vegetarian, or anything else they decide to be.
Meat is just what we got used to building meals around. It’s what the bacteria in our kids’ bodies got used to eating, so they insist on more or they feel unsatisfied. We have no time to boil chick peas for 2 hours. We feel uncomfortable when our 10 year old announces they’re going vegetarian, because now we have yet another activity. The husband would grumble because nobody is going to tell him what he can and can’t eat.
I want to understand the facts but this issue is mired in the same lobbyism and secrecy that cripples every other big issue. If we looked right at it, it would be too ugly, too scary, and too big. We let someone else look after it so we don’t have to. They don’t let us anywhere near it.
Macleans articles are fair and multi-faceted. I can get a handle on the larger topic by reading 4 pages. I understand the history and the arguments, and not sound like an idiot when the subject comes up. This topic will not be going away and the sooner I get it, the sooner my family’s health and sustainability will improve.
Canadians should pick up this issue. We’ll be feeling the difference by next month.
Comments
4 Responses to “This Week in Macleans March 29 2010: Forced To Get Real”
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A Greener Tea
Web Maintenence by Rick Beckman
I concur with your thoughts wholeheartedly. I have been an on-again, off-again vegetarian for many years. I, too, have read Pollan’s work (and other, perhaps even more explicit ones) and understand the horrors of the factory farm system (in the United States, at least). I also understand that the term, “free-range” is often a fallacy, and that “all-organic” often entails additional horrors for the animals involved. My body and hormones eventually rebel against a meatless diet; my husband won’t participate. My mind, heart and conscience rebels against a meat-eating diet. The topic has troubled me for as long as I can recall.
Thanks for another thoughtful and thought-provoking piece!
I was not familiar with Macleans, but then I live in the US. It looks like a good publication, at least from the web site.
I acknowledge the the impact the US has on the rest of the world, good and bad, but it still amazes me that other countries spend time covering our politics.
I recently bought Tosca Reno’s book, The Eat-Clean Diet. (Reno is also a Canadian.) The title is a misnomer: it is not a diet book. It is a way to eat for life. I’ve started eating clean and the changes in my body and how I feel is indescribable.
If you care about the environment and about your health, please read The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith. There are some great reviews of the book out there as well, including by Dr. Dan Eades.
Hi all,
First of all, curly hair: I read Lorraine Massey’s “Curly Girl” 18 months ago, and it radically changed the way I look at my hair and how I treat it. I’ve brushed my hair maybe 5 times since then (no kidding). Ms. Massey suggests we curlies wash with conditioner only, however that doesn’t work for me. I’ve tried it in many different ways, but I always end up with an itchy scalp. But since 2006 I only wash with natural shampoo (J.R.Liggett’s Old-fashioned shampoo bar), so that’s an okay compromise for me and my hair. Since reading the book there is one thing that has changed entirely: I love my hair now. No more getting those haircuts that look great on people with straight hair but which inevitably comprise 1 hour of blow-drying and spraying and getting irritated over strands that won’t bend the way they’re supposed to every day. Nowadays I wake up, I spritz my hair with water, crunch it gently – and it obeys me and behaves beautifully. It takes 2 minutes at the most. I’ve found a new me in my curls. I used to think my ringlets were just a thing of my childhood. Well, no. What a pleasant suprise!
On the meat-eating issue: I became a vegetarian, or should I say, non meat-eater 2,5 months ago, solely for ethical reasons. I don’t want to eat animals that have dies horrendous deaths after lives subjected to horrendous conditions. I read some articles on halal (the muslim way of slaughtering animals, for those of you who don’t know) and after that I just felt compelled to stop eating meat immediately. There had been a process leading up to that moment though. I’ve never been a keen meat eater to begin with and I had felt this way more or less since I was a child, but always reasoned it away with my inellect (which said: “Well, what is there to eat instead? It’s too complicated to change.”).
Since deciding to quit meat (I do eat fish occasionally) I’ve noticed something very remarkable. This might sound like some religious delirium, but I feel I’ve come to an understanding of compassion. I feel connected to all creatures in a way I never felt before.
Besides the spiritual gains, there’s also a sense of lightness in my body and that heavy “almost a headache but not quite” feeling each morning is gone. My family still eats meat and I won’t impose my will on them, I prefer to lead by example and see where it takes them.
I really don’t miss meat at all. I can’t way who’s right and who’s wrong when it comes to the effect on the earth and so on, so I won’t go into that. I’d just like to say: to each their own. It’s not easy to avoid meat, it’s a habit that’s hard to break since our society is built around meat on our tables. Still, if your heart tells you to choose other ways of getting your protein, go for it. I happen to disagree with the statement of Lierre Keith, saying humans are meat-eaters by physiology, but until the issue has been proven one way or the other, I’d say go with your gut and enjoy whatever is on your plate.