This month, temperatures plunged to record-breaking low levels in Virginia. During our 18-degree weather in the region’s “polar vortex” I joined a colleague of mine in a lettuce bikini to hand out free veggie burgers downtown in Norfolk. The Virginian-Pilot was nice enough to send out a shivering reporter to cover our adventure, although he did forget his hat.
My recap: I wasn’t expecting to wear a lettuce bikini for PETA that day. We lost a “lettuce lady” due to cold feet (perhaps literally), so I jumped in last minute. The morning was spent scrambling around to pull the pieces together. Leg shaving, bikini fitting, hand warmer activating, car battery jumping. I didn’t have time to stop or to think about the implications of the plunge I was about to take. It wasn’t until that moment when I clumsily peeled off my pants over my bulky boots that it sunk it. It wasn’t just cold. Basically, the heat seemed to have been sucked out of the air like a vacuum, and that empty, dead air filled my bones in seconds. The surface of my skin felt like a layer of ice over a pond about to shatter as a child tenuously steps over the edge. Within minutes, my whole core shook. But we forged on with smiles, laughs, and free coffee from a nice city employee who seemed to love us dearly. My partner Rachel stood by the whole time, as well, slipping me sips of hot water from a hidden spot within her coat as though it was something off the black market.
Yes, it was chilly, to say the least, as we donned lettuce bikinis at Monticello Station in record-breaking temperatures for an entire hour. But we wanted to get people’s attention—and we did. Passersby eagerly gobbled up our free veggie burgers and recipes as we showed off PETA’s new ad encouraging them to “get on board—go vegan!” People bit into their burgers, globs of mustard sticking to their chins, as we pointed out that the new year is the perfect time to get fit and make a difference for animals just by eating great-tasting vegan foods. As hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons, the ad’s star, points out, affordable vegan meals such as veggie burgers are available everywhere, including chains such as Johnny Rockets (the source of that day’s goodies) and Burger King.
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And the entire time I stood out there, my mind lingered on the chickens. The chickens who every day are thrown and kicked into transport trucks by the hundreds and sent flying down the highway to a gruesome death. Those chickens are never given reprieve from the snow or the rain or the sleet or the cold. They sit there, crammed together with other chickens, often with broken bones and barely a breath left in them, and they wait for a terrifying end. There is no choice in factory farming. But I, as a human, have a choice.
So what are you waiting for? Will you turn over a new leaf and try vegan?