The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle... the PETA version.

It took me about 12 months to become a fairly strict lacto-ovo vegetarian.
It started with a lenten resolution. Going off to a fairly hippie college and becomming friends with a lot of vegetarians was the next step. The cafeteria mystery meat made the whole path easier. By the time the next spring had rolled around, not only was I not observing Lent, I was convinced that I would never want to eat meat again.

I still don't observe Lent, not in the traditional sense of abstention and pre-Easter purification. But I have started eating meat again.

I stopped practicing regular lacto-ovo-vegetarianism a few years ago, and began occasional forays into the world of pescatarianism. However, I still publically identified as a vegetarian - just "one who eats fish" despite the fact that that term is self-contradictory, and that it used to make me really really angry. Why did I do it? For the same reason all the other people that I used to be so stinkin' self-righteous about did it - nobody knows the difference between a pescatarian and a muscatarian or a vascatarian or a secretarian, and the people of this world, bless their collective souls, are more able and willing to wrap their minds around a contradiction in terms than a new latin term. Also, I just got tired of explaining it all the time.


But, yes. Now I don't just eat fish-that-are-not-vegetables, I also eat meat-that-is-not-a-vegetable. Like cows and chickens and stuff.

It still bothers me that something has to die so that I may be nourished, but I am more comfortable now with the way that life circles.

The violent, inhumane way that most meat animals are treated in this country is still a problem for me, but I am comfortable purchasing meat from responsible farmers who treat their animals well.

I used to feel that I was making an environmental impact by choosing to eat low on the trophic scale. I now feel that I can make more of an environmental impact by trying to eat locally and with the seasons.

I am not any kind of a vegetarian any more.

I am scared to be public about this, because I do not want people to expect me to eat meat as a given. I'm certainly not a meatatarian just because I'm not a vegetarian. The smell of raw meat still squicks me out. I still don't like the texture and taste of some meats. I still eat mostly vegetables/grains, etc, but every once in a while, I eat some meat. A few bites of chicken or beef, a soup made with home-made stock, a few bits of some kind of salty, cured meat added to a stew for flavor? Sure, I eat that. But I would probably gag if I tried to eat a pork chop or hamburger.

There is no comfortable label for my new eating practices. I liked having a label. It simplified things.