Former ARCH ENEMY frontwoman Alissa White-Gluz has opened up about her long-standing commitment to veganism, explaining that her decision ultimately comes down to a simple principle: compassion for animals.
Speaking on the latest episode of Knotfest’s “She’s With The Band”, hosted by Tori Kravitz, White-Gluz addressed some of the most common misconceptions surrounding veganism and animal rights, while reflecting on how public perception has shifted over the years.
“I have seen animal rights, not even just veganism, but just animal rights in general, go through a rollercoaster of successes and losses,” she said (as transcribed by Blabbermouth). “It’s always a very interesting thing where if somebody rescues a beagle from an animal testing facility, which actually just happened — a bunch of beagles were rescued and the activists went to jail — but they’re applauded as heroes, because they saved dogs. But if those same people were walking out with another animal — let’s say a very similar animal who actually is more intelligent and shares more DNA with humans, a pig — then people probably wouldn’t applaud them. They would just comment ‘bacon’. And the thing is they can comment that all they want — I know where bacon comes from; you’re not blowing my mind.”
White-Gluz went on to point out that veganism is often misunderstood as a trend rather than a belief system rooted in ethics.
“I think that, unfortunately, right now we have reached a point where there’s so much oversaturation in the influencer culture that veganism got kind of sucked into a diet trend, which it is not,” she explained. “Just to make it perfectly clear, for someone who has never met a vegan, you probably won’t know that they’re vegan until you maybe go out to eat with them somewhere and they place an order. And then you still might not know unless you straight-up ask them. It’s not something that ever comes up in conversation.”
“I think people have this weird misconception, because they maybe have never met a vegan, and they’re, like, ‘Oh, vegans just walk up to you and say, ‘I’m vegan and you should be vegan.” That has never happened. [Laughs] That doesn’t happen,” Alissa continued. “I have some friends that I’ve known for years that I didn’t know they were vegan, and then we were, like, ‘Oh, me too. Cool. Okay, great.’ You know, acquaintances.”
Having been vegetarian since birth and fully vegan since the 1990s, White-Gluz emphasized that her personal choice has always been straightforward: “I went vegan because I love animals and I don’t wanna hurt them. That’s it. And if other people feel that same way and they don’t wanna hurt animals, we’re at a point in time now where it’s actually really easy to avoid hurting them. So they could find that, ‘Hey, I found a way to stop hurting animals. It’s really easy. It doesn’t cost anything. All that it involves is me choosing to eat that thing instead of that thing. Cool. Same price, same nutritional value. One thing is made from plants and the other thing is made from dead animals.’ It’s so easy now.”
Beyond diet, White-Gluz stressed that the core of her philosophy is minimizing harm in all aspects of life: “I don’t care what you do — I don’t care. Do whatever you want it. I mean, it applies to everything. Drive whatever you want, sleep with whoever you want, eat whatever you want, wear whatever you want, as long as you’re not hurting anyone. All those things, when they’re done without hurting anyone, I don’t care. It’s up to you. You have free will. Go enjoy it. But if you choose to wear a real fur coat, you’re hurting someone,” she explained. “So now it’s not just about you. Now you’re involving somebody else, and you’re taking their life — many lives, actually, for a fur coat.”
She also encouraged people to make incremental changes rather than striving for perfection: “I’ve had to really think about this a lot because in my head it’s so easy to be vegan that I’m, like, ‘Well, why would it be a problem? It’s so easy.’ But I think that if people love animals and care about animals, or care about their health or care about the environment, even if they’re able to just do it a little bit, it helps,” she added. “Because, look, if there’s people that are vegan half the time, that’s the same as if we had half the amount of people vegan all the time. So it’s the same impact. So if people are, like, ‘Yeah, I’m mostly vegan,’ but they like to have their cheese or whatever now and then, they’re still doing a great job. And so I think that there’s no need to like strive for perfection and feel like they’re like locked into something. Again, for me, I don’t waiver because I don’t want to, but if other people have a hard time with it, even if they do it most of the time or some of the time, it’s still a good help. And I think that everybody has the ability to do that.”
Earlier this month, Alissa unveiled a new project, BLUE MEDUSA, which debuted with the single “Checkmate.” The band features Alyssa Day, Dani Sophia, and Alicia Vigil, with Delaney Jaster performing live drums.
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