How high can you go?
Are there limits to ethical consumerism?
Yesterday, whilst getting my organic, not tested on animals keratin treatment, the discussion with my hairdresser turned inexplicably from Married at First Sight to animal welfare.
“I love bhave hair products. They’re the best in the market and they’re not tested on animals”, Annemarie smartly informed me.
She then sighed. “I do love my Bobbi Brown makeup though. They test on animals. You’d have to go super, dorky 90s, like the Body Shop, to get animal-friendly products.”
I posed an ethical conundrum: most medications are tested on animals before they are tested on humans, and then released to the public. If she shunned animal-tested makeup, would she also eschew Panadol or Xanax?
“No”, she curtly replied. Her justification? Medicines are necessary, foundation isn’t.
She proceeded to itemise her list of banned, ‘bad’ products, including goose down pillows, doonas and jackets, and angora anything. Supposedly, when geese and bunnies are plucked [trigger alert], their skin can be ripped off in the process.
She loves a good steak, though. And she still allows herself the occasional Bobbi Brown shimmer splurge.
Which got me thinking: is totally ethical consumerism possible? I asked her this question. She responded, “perhaps for hippie dippie folk in Byron.”
At risk of conflating issues, I noted the Byron Shire has one of the highest rates of anti-vaxxers, as well as welfare recipients in the country.
So, can you be wholly cruelty-free without being a tax dodger and vector-spreader? Paging: one of those twenty-something female writers who ‘tries something out for a week’ to test this theory. Because if Planet Earth II taught me anything, it’s that while we mindlessly watch reality dating shows, animals are silently suffering.
