LUSH
COSMETICS
LUSH Cosmetics is known for their handmade and largely cruelty-free bath and beauty products. While not a vegan company, LUSH has expanded into the realm of animal rights advocacy. Under their “Fight Animal Testing” campaign, for instance, LUSH has been pressuring governments to end vivisection, even offering a large cash reward to anyone who can develop a solution.
While a concentrated effort to improve the condition of Nonhuman Animals is commendable, LUSH unfortunately replicates many of the harmful, misogynistic tactics favored by fulltime animal rights organizations like PETA. Offering some vegan products in their stores and getting active to end some forms of animal exploitation is obviously a good thing, but the damage LUSH could be doing to women is alarming.
laoreet eleifend eget mattis ipsum. Nam vehicula lorem erat, a consectetur libero. Vivamus id ipsum sit amet massa consectetur porta. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra.
FIGHT ANIMAL TESTING
LUSH intentionally chose a female actor to endure 10 hours of torture in a public space to, in so many words, teach women a lesson. Incidentally, products marketed to women are much more likely to be free of animal testing, unlike men’s products. The next time you are in a store that sells toiletry items, check the packaging of men’s products. How many are cruelty-free? You will be hard pressed to find any. Furthermore, most animal testers, farmers, and slaughterhouse workers are men. Men are more likely to hunt and men consume more Nonhuman Animal products than women. It’s even men who are buying animal hair coats, as the ability to adorn women with fur acts a male status symbol. Is it really so disingenuous to question men’s role in the systemic exploitation of animals?
The truth is that women are easy targets. Women are LUSH’s primary customers, and I suspect that LUSH is hoping to frighten women into choosing LUSH products over their competitors. LUSH is drawing on and aggravating the reality of male-on-female violence to secure sales.
LUSH has hosted many similarly problematic promotional stunts. For instance, one anti-vivisection demonstration featured bound women on their knees lined up outside the store with their mouths taped over. A woman dressed as a scientist (drawing on male imagery) loomed beside them. At another store, female employees were dressed as foxes and coquettishly arched their backs, smiling as a man threateningly hovered over them with a kitchen knife.
One store featured a 24 hour storefront display of an anguished woman in a leg-hold trap. In another, a woman was suspended by hooks inserted through the skin in her back to protest shark fishing. In a French store, a woman dressed as a rabbit cried out in anguish as her “fur” was peeled away, displaying her raw flesh below. Her naked body had been painted to resemble bloodied muscles.
LUSH is not afraid to use nudity, either. Protesting oil dependency, naked store employees wore mock oil barrel signs that cheekily read, “Time for an oil change or we’ll lose it all.” In one worldwide event, LUSH employees (who are mostly female) were paraded outside the store wearing nothing but aprons and high heels to hand out leaflets announcing LUSH’s “reduced packaging.” For some stores, aprons read: “Ask me why I’m naked.” Encouraging nude female employees to approach gazing men with LUSH leaflets is unsettling. But, handing out soon-to-be-trashed leaflets to men who are probably not in the market for bathbombs to advertise reduced packaging is just confusing. What’s the real objective here?
Entering a LUSH store is a magical experience, I can’t deny that. Stores are fragrant and colorful, and the staff is friendly and knowledgeable. I love having more than one vegan product to choose from (although I’m still confused as to why LUSH refuses to go completely vegan). I’ve been wearing their Karma perfume for 6 years now. But I can no longer shop with LUSH. When this bottle of Karma runs out, it will be my last. I’ve already informed my friends to find alternatives to the LUSH gift certificates I often receive.
It is clear to me that LUSH is exploiting the victimization and sexual objectification of women for profit. If LUSH is sincerely expecting these stunts to benefit animals, they might consider that aggravating normalized violence against women is counterintuitive to a campaign hoping to end violence against Nonhuman Animals. A message of peace and justice cannot be clearly articulated through oppressive actions.
There are many completely vegan and genuinely cruelty-free companies selling natural, hand-made cosmetic products that don’t throw women under the bus “for the cause” (or for the company). When (and if) LUSH decides to grant the same respect to women as they purport to grant to Nonhuman Animals, perhaps I’ll be smelling of orange blossom and patchouli again one day. In the meantime, I’m looking elsewhere.
varius adipiscing tempor. Vivamus id ipsum sit amet massa con-sectetur porta. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos himenaeos. Praesent dignissim ultrices neque. Aliquam auctor congue nunc sed interdum. Aenean sagittis gravida est, sit amet egestas metus venenatis non. Mauris non leo malesuada orci laoreet eleifend eget mattis ipsum. Nam vehicula lorem erat, a consectetur libero. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Sed et consectetur lacus. Sed sit amet nulla vel dolor gravida bibendum. Aenean sagittis gravida est, sit amet egestas metus venenatis non. Mauris non leo malesuada orci laoreet eleifend eget mattis ipsum. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora.Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.
iMagazine / April, 2013 5