Virtue, Vice and Veganuary

Written by Rebecca Jones, PhD Researcher in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Strathclyde. 

@beckmjones

January is coming to an end, but the currency of guilt is still thriving. Check the advertisement trends – the indulgence of Christmas is out, and diets and exercise are in.

I’m being flippant, of course. All things being otherwise neutral, there’s nothing wrong with the concept of a fresh start in the New Year, with saying cheerio to the things that make you feel a bit grim and swapping them for the things that make you feel better. There is absolutely nothing wrong with being healthy, or with treating your body with kindness.

But in January, all things are not neutral. In January, we’re bombarded with an advertisement offensive, a mass cashing-in on that principle of self-care. It’s a kind of dystopian genius, really. There’s a lot of money in selling Christmas as a time of going all-out. Advertising at that time of year gives us permission to dive deep and headlong into a pool of sherry and comfort food. The more the better, of course. That way, come January, we’ll be ripe for a bit of guilting. We’ll buy the slimming mags and diet powders and gym memberships, we’ll buy into the promises of ‘mind-blowing results in no time at all’. I don’t think I need to go into a full feminist analysis of the cynical advertising tactics of the food and diet industries here. It’s a fairly recognisable capitalistic pattern. Christmas sells and, in January, diets sell. 

But I do want to talk about where Veganuary fits in here.

I’m a researcher of ecofeminist animal studies, and of course the vegan movement is an area I touch upon a lot in my work. I’m fascinated by how its meaning and image varies, how it is communicated, by whom and to what end. 

I’m in favour of Veganuary. As a charity and a movement for positive change I think it does great work. I’m in favour of measures that educate people about veganism, and that make it easier for all people to become and remain vegan. It’s not an easy brief, either. Our food choices have meaning to us. They’re coded, and they go to the heart of our identity. The conversation about how our food choices aren’t just personal but also political can be a fraught one to have. What I’m about to suggest is not a slight on Veganuary or anyone who’s giving it a try. I don’t think we need to tear it up and start again or anything like that. What worries me about Veganuary is, I suppose, a question of timing as much as anything else. What worries me is who and what decides the direction of travel for veganism as a movement, and who or what is included or excluded as a result. 

I’m not a marketing professional, but even I can see that ‘Veganuary’ is catchy. I can see that it makes sense to have it in January, in the same way ‘Sober October’ flies off the tongue much more easily than ‘Maybe Cut Down a Bit March’. But even if it does rhyme, having Veganuary in January is not a neutral thing, in just the same way that health and fitness is not a neutral discussion at this time of year, either. 

When Veganuary is located alongside the post-Christmas diet, restriction and detoxification narratives that are by now so familiar, it inevitably says something about the movement, both to the people already involved in it and those considering giving it a try. It runs the risk of associating veganism not as a lifestyle choice that is rooted in ecofeminist principles of care for the planet, our fellow humans in places where the impact of climate change is being felt ever more dramatically, and respect and care for the species with whom we share our world, but as a diet you go on for one really unpleasant, grinding month in order to expiate your guilt for ‘being a bit naughty’ at Christmas. 

I know a lot of people will take issue with my position on this, because there’s no doubt that a lot of people try veganism for health and/or weight management reasons. Veganuary’s own research suggests that 46% take part for health reasons, while smaller numbers cite animals (34%) and environment (12%) as motivating factors. Whether I like it or not, veganism’s reputation as a health panacea is obviously a major driver in getting people to give Veganuary a go. As a business case, I can see it might look like a good idea to play that aspect up, and to play the more ‘awkward’, knotty subjects like animal cruelty and climate change down. Yet I’m sceptical about the true scale of the long-term benefit cultivating this impression has for veganism as a movement, for making it as inclusive as possible and highlighting that it is entirely do-able not just on a temporary but on a permanent basis. 

As a feminist, I believe the policing of bodies and how they should look is a massive mechanism of oppression and a very involved problem, and in the final analysis I suppose I’m just not over the moon about veganism being weaponised to sell those prevailing ideas. Part of the ‘trouble’ is that a vegan diet doesn’t ultimately get you out of the calorie deficit bind anyway. It’s possible to be overweight and vegan, and it’s possible not to be overweight while continuing to consume meat and dairy. Plant-based diets and weight loss don’t always correlate, and I really don’t think they should have to in order for us to take veganism seriously anyway. 

The Burger King Rebel Burger might be 'woke', but it might
not be vegan . . .

Veganism is being appropriated by sales and marketing at the other end of the spectrum, too. Recently, fast food chains have been quick to take advantage of a pushback against veganism as tasteless health food – KFC, Burger King and Subway are all amongst the chains that have showcased plant-based offerings recently (even if, bizarrely, Burger King’s ‘Rebel Burger’, advertised alongside a soft drink cheekily branded ‘Woke’, isn’t even strictly suitable tor vegans due to preparation and cooking methods . . .). Whether this is a good thing or not is a matter of debate. Many, I'm sure, will see it as a positive thing, bringing veganism into the mainstream and making it more convenient. They have a point. Others, and I think I’d have to count myself here, are concerned that veganism, and Veganuary, are now being appropriated by big business to sell products in a whole new way that, like diet trends and body policing, is detached from the meaning of the movement itself. As a member of the LGBT+ community, it has begun to remind me of the ‘pride-ification’ of big business branding – rainbowing a logo is all very well, but it really only means something when the business truly reflects those values in day-to-day practice. The one or two vegan offerings do not necessarily equate to meaningful progress on issues of animal welfare, or pay and working conditions, within a business. It’s no wonder, in this context, that many of my fellow feminists find themselves ambivalent or even opposed to veganism. On the level of lived experience, it can start to look a little like something that both begins and ends with a health fad, a way for industries to shift stuff rather than ideas. The idea of veganism as an occasional purgative, rather than a more-than-diet lifestyle choice that is ethically motivated, is potentially very harmful to a movement which has a very important role to play in affecting positive change.

On that note, it’s also interesting to see that this diet trend perception might not just be ambivalent to vegan values, but might actually be working to counter them. I recently spoke to a male friend who works in an almost exclusively male environment, who told me that while he went vegan for ethical reasons, he told his colleagues it was for health reasons “because you don’t get as much stick that way”. Indeed, the celebratory alignment of plant-based diets with new (hetero)masculine health tropes can be witnessed in the popular film, The Game Changers. As I suggest elsewhere, what this film shows is that when we cultivate the ‘vegan for health’ image, we risk shoring up the denial of the centrality of animals (both human and non-human) and the environment to the movement. Of course it is possible to argue that the means don’t matter provided the end (more people going vegan) is met. But if veganism is encouraged by referencing and reifying dominant narratives about things like body image and gender, it’s not tackling oppression at its root. 

It's not just OK to talk about animals in Veganuary, it's important.

In future I’d like to see Veganuary addressing some of these things more actively. Perhaps it seems odd, but I’d like to see less focus on food, in some respects. Don’t get me wrong, as a year-round vegan it is great to see such a glut of vegan fayre come on sale in January - it feels like my Christmas has come slightly late. But the conversation has to go beyond that. I want people to know that being vegan isn’t a punishment. It’s not an exercise in deprivation or a way to atone for enjoying what we’re told are the nice things in life too much. Veganism is fruit and vegetables but it can be cake and biscuits, sausage rolls and beer and wine too. For as long as Veganuary isn’t clearly set aside from the traditional post-Christmas privations, it’s going to maintain a disconnect between veganism and its links to feminist principles of the personal and the political. I don’t think too much interweaving of veganism with the diet industry is helping our case. That said, I don’t want to see veganism being steered too far the other way, allowing fast food chains or other big business to drive the vegan narrative, just so that they can claim their slice of the capitalist vegan pie. 

Veganuary is great for so many reasons, but I suppose what I’m calling for here is for veganism as a progressive movement to continue to be curated and shaped by vegans themselves. Being vegan is becoming easier, and part of that is of course more companies making more products available on the market. I’m not someone who won’t be happy until we’re all sitting up a tree nibbling a raw carrot or something like that (most of us vegans aren’t, in my experience). I just want to see Veganuary stimulating conversations rather than sales, to keep building veganism, but from the ground up, on feminist principles that value intersectional approaches, diverse voices, personal experience, context and circumstances but that also keep non-human animals at the centre of movements that are supposed to centre them as part of their discourse. Get out there and try the newest vegan offerings from the big companies if you feel compelled to. I honestly do understand the appeal. But consider that talking about ethical veganism is actually equally important (as is the case with feminism, you can tell how important it is by how much we get told to shut up about it). 

If you haven’t already, take a look at some of the work that’s been, and continues to be done by feminist academics and activists like Carol J. Adams, Amy Breeze Harper, Aph Ko, Josephine Donovan, Lori Gruen, Joan Dunayer, Tara Sophia Bahna-James and many, many others, because Veganuary deserves to be about way more than selling us ‘new year, new you’ virtue with one hand, and vice with the other.