Beautiful women are always found in the ranks of monumental movements. While I find myself unable to fetishize anyone whose name rhymes with para-sailing, there is no doubt that both the rise of Republican women and such opposition as the Obama Girl (and Michelle herself, to many) are markers that people are starting to care about politics again.

Another popular area for stunning females to appear is in the ranks of the omnivorally-disadvantaged, particularly the various strains of vegetarian.

While politics does not make you beautiful (No examples needed, but still: Hillary), there is reason to believe that vegetarian diets do, or at least help.

Many scientific studies have found that vegetarians fare better than the average in areas such as cholesterol, obesity and risk for heart disease. Of course, if you’re going to compare people who watch what they eat with people who don’t, the conclusions should be fairly obvious; living on greens may have less to do with the celery you enjoy than the Doritos you avoid.

Vegetarianism may be garbage or genius; I am certainly not qualified to lay down an opinion and expect a mass conversion to whichever extreme or point in between that I choose. The saving grace of vegetarianism that lets it be socially accepted by people who wouldn’t try it in a million years is that it is private.

The smoker can share his habit with you just by proximity, and one can even have a little understanding for those who are convinced that every homosexual in the district is eyeing them up, thus making them rather uncomfortable.

But, so long as he does not preach its saving graces or pester me about it, not even the slightest inconvenience can come to me on the leaves of my neighbor’s salad.

Aside from the few vegetarians who just really dislike plants, most of the crowd have issues with the prospect of cruelty to animals. But even with carnivorous humans turning over a new leaf every day, those who love their greens have ably recognized the problem: the vegetarians remove their own tacit complicity in any animal cruelty involved in meat processing, but their existence hasn’t done anything to stop it.

In fact, if there are fewer people buying something, the makers have to either cut costs or cut production, and being humane is expensive.

While vegetarians are hardly the only people backing lessened animal cruelty (I myself have a considerable love for rabbits), they seem to be the most passionate about it, since they are happy to change their lifestyle for the furred and feathered friends.

More animal shelters should be built; more stores like PetCo need to stop screwing things up and selling off living things all willy-nilly to unresponsible people; what should absolutely not be done is give the little piggies pillows and blankets before they get turned into succulent bacon.

Consider: vegetarians and general supporters of turning down the efficiency knob in the meat-making industry are typically healthy, middle or upper class citizens with homes and jobs.

They are not the poor people at the margins of society, the people who don’t ask “What’s in this” but: “Will there be any tomorrow.” In a world where starvation and malnourishment are still haunting realities, in order to provide for people, sometimes we have to allow the lesser evils.

These animals are not human slaves, chained and lashed for their master’s ease and wealth. They are the same, dumb beasts that have been eaten by man for quite a while.

How does one measure human and non-human life? It’s really a rather philosophical question, but the answer is obvious. Human intellect has given us the whole earth as our plaything; it is a precious gift indeed, but it is not our master.

Animals are not only unintelligent but lack the most defining human attribute of all: the imagination. Even the smartest or oldest of the earth’s other species has no Shakespeare or J.S. Bach. They do not even have the skill to write Battlefield Earth or that romance novel that nobody knows you tried to write (it wasn’t actually that bad, to be fair).

The idea that anyone could equate animal life to human or even suggest that the former might have more value than the latter should be staggering to anyone. We do the poor beasts little good with our fields of knives, but the smile of a Starving Child in Africa™ makes it all worth it. And if this gives one beautiful woman something to do other than handing me flyers with nasty pictures of dead pigs, the whole article will be worth it.

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