Cool Fashion

1869:

Vegans want people to change their attitude towards using animals, but we don’t just want a local change amongst family and friends, we want it amongst LOTS of people - we need to be aiming for change on a grand scale.   

People will change if they think it’s in their best interests. For example, they’ll be very willing to change to keep abreast of fashion - no one likes to be out-of-fashion. And they don’t want to be seen as anything but ‘normal’ - normalcy helps us hold down a job and keeps a certain reputation within our social group. If we want to seem ‘cool’, we’ll keep in with the latest hairstyles or clothing. We’ll try to maintain peer acceptance.

         

When it comes to a radical change of lifestyle, like going vegan, it might seem like a promise of social suicide, to voluntarily act in such a different way to almost all the people we know. We might hope to persuade our friends to follow suit, but they too will be afraid to move away from the predominant fashion – in this case, by no longer eating stuff made from animals. To go vegan means, at first, that we do risk going it alone, the aim being that we might eventually lead a new fashion. That requires some bravery. Ultimately, though, it needs a cool head, to strike out into the unknown territory of new fashion (as in, leading fashion not following it).

This is relatively easy with a new hairstyle but with a whole different eating regime, based on ethical principles, it calls for some considerable strength of character, to be inspirational enough to bring people across, for them to change in the same way, for the same reasons.

         

How do we inspire? We know ‘shaming’ won’t get people to change, but what might move them is their fear of falling behind the current fashion. Once people feel that there is a trend towards compassionate eating, they might want to get in early, to be ahead of the bandwagon. To get them to wear shoes that aren’t made of leather may be successful when the wearing of leather shoes is considered in much the same way as the wearing of furs is today.

         

If we try to use ‘guilt’ to get people to change, they’ll probably try to oblige us, at first. A new idea is always attractive until the drawbacks start to surface. So, change happens, but it’s unlikely to be a permanent change. In one’s private world, in a world of free-choice, the novelty of change soon wears off, the ‘new habit’ weaken back to nothing.

However, if the ‘coming fashion’ is overlaid with ethics it might have a better chance of escaping the gravitational pull of convention. In which case we may need to have faith in the strongest card in our hand, and wait to see if ethics will become the catalyst for major change.