skinny bitch

sunday, morgan and i were browsing in our local target after church -- i had been out of town for work this week and didn't get around to picking up father's day cards, even though we had plenty of gifts for Dork. (i always put off buying a father's day card until the last possible minute....my dad passed away eight years ago and it still pains me to browse through the cards and see the ones that i would have picked out to give to my dad...so now i try to take the emphasis off of me and do it through my daughter's eyes and just look for cards that are suitable for a two year-old to give to her daddy!)

it never fails that, when i'm in target, i have to stop by the books and magazine racks, just to browse and see what's new. i perused two paperbacks, 'harvesting the heart' by jodi picoult and one called 'momzillas,' which looked funny, since it was about the struggles of upper-crust mommies in manhattan. i put them both in my cart, since i'll need some good chick lit to read at the beach this summer (meaning, after my daughter goes to bed at night!), and another book finally beckoned me to pick it up. i've noticed 'skinny bitch' many times before when i browsed the book aisles but never picked up, but today i decided to, and even tossed it in my cart...i figured, i can spend $11.20 and if it teaches me at least one good weight-loss technique, then it's worth it, right?

since i hadn't started another book after finishing 'such a pretty fat' by jen lancaster two weeks ago, i cracked open 'skinny bitch' after morgan went down for a nap, and i was appalled by what i was reading. the book basically promotes veganism as a way of life and of getting healthy, but in its quest to do so, it brings to light the sheer disgust of the meat and dairy industries.

i've always been teetering on the edge of vegetarianism -- i love animals and when i stop and think about what i'm really eating when i cut into a steak, i can barely stand it, and i won't eat veal or lamb primarily for those reasons -- but i'm not what i think of as a typical 'veg-head.' i mean, i'm a conservative republican!! and i wear leather shoes, i enjoy dressing nicely and wearing makeup, and i'm a girly-girl, not some granola-eating, earthy-crunchy chick that doesn't shave her armpits -- or at least that's always been my narrow-minded view of what a vegetarian looks like. but this book made me look at it a whole different way -- basically, it espouses that if you put crap into your bodies, your body will look like crap, and that you should eat clean. it goes on to detail stories of what really happens inside a meat slaughterhouse, and alerts readers to the antibiotics, chemicals and shit (literally!!) that gets put into cattle, pigs, and chickens, which we, in turn, ingest whenever we eat those animals.

pretty much grossed me the hell out and gave me a wake-up call, that i don't want all those chemicals and antibiotics in my body and that, even though i can't change the meat industry and the inhumane way they treat and kill animals for food, i can do my little part by not contributing to the consumption. now comes the hard part....actually sticking to it when i smell seared cow flesh on the grill!! i'll be sharing my experiences here -- i'm starting slow and have signed an online pledge to go without meat for 30 days, so i'm looking forward to seeing how i feel without animal by-products in my system. Dork pretty much thinks this is all a big joke (he loves veal and said he's proud to be at the top of the food chain, so that's what i'm dealing with here...) and i told him i don't care if he eats meat, and i'll continue to prepare it for him and my daughter if they want it (although she's not a big meat eater, either). after all, it's my decision and i'm not forcing it on anyone, but hopefully in the process, i can help him be a little more aware of what he's eating, and we can do some creative cooking in the process!