all creatures, big and small

So, I work in publishing, for a good little company that puts out social justice titles, many about animal rights. This past weekend I found myself at a conference, once again, hawking books. I ended up hanging out with Rory Freedman, who I've become friends with over the past few years, and who is the powerhouse behind the bestselling book Skinny Bitch (and a followup cookbook). If you're not familiar with Rory or the book, it's animal rights disguised as sassy chick lit slash hard as nails advice about how to live better. She's been on the Today show and Ellen and all kinds of surprising places for a vegan activist. She's pretty and small and healthy and vegan, and that's her schtick.

This is someone I've had heated discussions with about the potential correlation between cilantro haters and those who can't eat spicy food (vs. the rest of us who live for cilantro and heat). People I have idiot conversations with while eating too many samosas are not usually the same people doing the boob tube talk show circuit.

But Rory's made it big, and I think she's done animals a good deed. She hasn't simplified animal rights, it's not a sexist approach (as some have suggested), and she hasn't dumbed it down. Though she's appealing to a Cosmo crowd who care too much about how they look or want to lose weight, that isn't really her thing. The thesis of this book is that beautiful people are compassionate people, good to themselves, to the earth, to other people, to animals. Not that all vegans are skinny (she knows me, right?), or that everyone need fit a certain body type.

So cheers to this hard ass girl from Jersey, doing a bang up job for animals and women. (What woman doesn't benefit from getting out of the animal abuse cycle?) Read this hilarious book, and know that when Rory calls you a whore, she means it lovingly, and when she talks about pus, she's doing it for your own good.