Always Too Much and Never Enough by Jasmin Singer

Author:Jasmin Singer [Singer, Jasmin]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2016-01-12T00:00:00+00:00

TWELVE

opinions were for thin, beautiful women

Becoming vegan and diving into a world that meant so much to me—animal advocacy—was the best decision I ever made. It gave me crystal-clear vision and purpose. How could I learn what was happening to animals behind closed doors and not do something about it? It was also a complete breath of fresh air to be working for something that wasn’t all about me, unlike the work I had been doing (or trying to do) as an actor.

However, though my shift to embracing veganism and animal rights did radically alter my relationship with the world, as well as my relationship with food, it did not succeed in getting me to slow down or reevaluate my consumption habits. I was as mindlessly ravenous as I had ever been, and I justified my enormous appetite by telling myself that it was for the animals.

After seeing the film that compelled me to commit myself to helping animals, I decided to put all the drive that I had formerly channeled into auditioning into finding a job in animal rights. With the encouragement of Marisa and of her boss at the time, Maxine, within just a few weeks of becoming vegan, I went down to Norfolk, Virginia, to spend a week volunteering for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). If that experience doesn’t thrust you full-force into the world of animal rights, nothing will. I see now that getting me a short-term gig with PETA was Maxine’s and Marisa’s insurance that I would be a keeper, and it worked.

Unlike the atmosphere at any animal rights job I’ve had since, the PETA offices had a corporate feel to them (that is, except for the many marvelous dogs and cats wandering around), complete with dozens of tiny cubicle workspaces, one of which was assigned to me for the week. Familiarizing myself with the antivivisection (animal testing) campaign I would be helping out with, I sat at my desk and watched video after video of chemicals burning away the cornea of a rabbit’s eye, caged mice and dogs being force-fed large doses of everything from pharmaceuticals to household cleaners, puppies being bred to have degenerative eye diseases that culminated in blindness, and baby monkeys undergoing “maternal deprivation experiments,” being pulled from their mothers in order to induce psychological trauma. As I sat in my cubicle watching a rabbit writhing as her newly shaven skin was burned with chemicals, I was incensed. I stood up to peek into others’ cubicles and see if they, too, were fuming—or at least weeping. But what I saw instead was everyone typing away, working diligently—not unaffected (they had devoted their lives to work at PETA, after all), but simply determined to make a change.

Now that I had found my purpose, I saw no other choice but to be all in. And I was surprisingly successful. When I returned to New York after my short but life-changing week at PETA, I became obsessed with finding a job that was in any way centered around raising consciousness about animals.

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