LUSH Cosmetics: Kind(ish) to Animals, Not to Women

By Corey Lee Wrenn, M.S., A.B.D. Ph.D.

Lush Not Vegan

LUSH Cosmetics is known for its handmade and largely cruelty-free bath and beauty products. While not a vegan company, LUSH has expanded into the realm of Nonhuman Animal rights advocacy. Under its “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 full-time animal rights organizations like PETA. Offering some vegan products in its stores and getting active to end some forms of Nonhuman Animal exploitation is obviously a good thing, but the damage LUSH could be doing to women is alarming.

Take, for example, its anti-vivisection street demonstration that featured a young woman in a nude body suit enduring graphic reenactments of torture at the hands of a male “researcher” for ten hours. The woman was dragged about by a rope tied to her neck, forcibly pushed into various positions, and force-fed. She was pulled by her hair, injected with saline needles, and her head was shaved. While the woman was a consenting professional performer, the pain she endured was clearly real. This event took place in a store window and was fully visible to the public.

The use of a female actor was no coincidence. LUSH explains:

“We felt it was important, strong, well and thoroughly considered that the test subject was a woman. This is important within the context of Lush’s wider Fighting Animal Testing campaign, which challenges consumers of cosmetics to feel, to think and to demand that the cosmetics industry is animal cruelty free.  It is also important in the context Jacqui’s performance practice:  a public art intervention about the nature of power and abuse.  It would have been disingenuous at best to have pretended that a male subject could represent such systemic abuse.”

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 its 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.

White woman covered from head to toe in red paint wearing only underwear laying in the center of a Canadian flag as though she was dead in front of a LUSH store

Nonhuman Animal rights organizations frequently use a woman’s body that has been sexualized in some way to represent an abused, tortured, or dead victim. The intentional conflation of sex and violence is particularly problematic.

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?

White woman wearing barrel sign, nude underneath in LUSH store

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 actually wore Karma perfume for 6 years, but I can no longer shop with LUSH (I switched to Pacifica, which is 100% vegan and does not demean its female employees). I also 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 combat oppression, it 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 it purports to grant to Nonhuman Animals, perhaps I’ll be smelling of orange blossom and patchouli again one day. In the meantime, I’m shopping elsewhere.

 


Corey Lee WrennDr. Wrenn is Lecturer of Sociology. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology with Colorado State University in 2016. She received her M.S. in Sociology in 2008 and her B.A. in Political Science in 2005, both from Virginia Tech. She was awarded Exemplary Diversity Scholar, 2016 by the University of Michigan’s National Center for Institutional Diversity. She served as council member with the American Sociological Association’s Animals & Society section (2013-2016) and was elected Chair in 2018. She serves as Book Review Editor to Society & Animals and has contributed to the Human-Animal Studies Images and Cinema blogs for the Animals and Society Institute. She has been published in several peer-reviewed academic journals including the Journal of Gender Studies, Feminist Media Studies, Disability & Society, Food, Culture & Society, and Society & Animals. In July 2013, she founded the Vegan Feminist Network, an academic-activist project engaging intersectional social justice praxis. She is the author of A Rational Approach to Animal Rights: Extensions in Abolitionist Theory (Palgrave MacMillan 2016).

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The Reality of Sex Trafficking in the U.S. and Women-Positive Alternatives to LUSH Cosmetics

Thistle Farm Vegan

PBS is currently streaming an amazing documentary on sex trafficking in the United States called, A Path Appears. The statistics are sobering. While most Americans believe prostitution to be a “choice” and a “victimless crime,” the truth is that these women (primarily poor women and women of color) are surviving severe emotional trauma and child abuse (usually sexual). Prostitution is the revictimization of the most vulnerable. As with the consumption of Nonhuman Animal suffering (“meat,” dairy, rodeos, zoos, “pets,” etc.), it is simply easier to view this relationship of dominance and destruction as a mutually beneficial one built on consent. But that is far from the case. Prostitution is for all intents and purposes sex trafficking.

In my vegan feminist work, I am frequently critical of how women’s bodies are also degraded within the Nonhuman Animal rights movement to sell organizations, to sell veganism, or to sell vegan products. Women’s bodies are bought and sold for someone else’s gain, but we too often take the “live and let live” path and presume that women are engaging in these behaviors purely out of “choice” and that it’s “victimless” or just “harmless antics.”  The degradation of women’s bodies should be our business and we should not look away because this is not simply a matter of personal choice. Powerful gender roles and a culture of sexism provide specific opportunities for women, and these opportunities are unevenly distributed. The research is so desperately clear that the sexual objectification and degradation of women’s bodies is linked to actual, physical harm to women as a group, but vulnerable women in particular. White women of means may have the privilege of some degree of agency when getting naked to pass out Tofutti deserts for PETA or flyers for LUSH, but real women in our communities are being hurt by the ideology of misogyny that is upheld by the notion that women’s bodies are commodities.

Two LUSH employees wearing aprons that read, "Ask me why I'm naked." They are both white and young, appear to have no shirt on underneath their apron

Readers are often flabbergasted to learn that LUSH engages the sexual objectification of women, and, while many stubbornly defend the company, others ask what other alternatives might be available. The truth is that LUSH is not even a vegan company. Many 100% vegan companies exist that produce body products in a way that respects women and other animals alike. Of course, we do not always have access to 100% vegan companies and some of us like to support the vegan options made available by vegan-friendly companies to encourage the growth of veganism. I was actually quite thrilled to learn that the non-profit featured on A Path Appears that saves and supports women and girls who have survived the sex trade also employs these women and funds the non-profit’s services with an animal-friendly bath and body business. They report on their website that almost everything they produce is vegan (except for some products that contain beeswax and lanolin and are products of violence) and no products are tested on Nonhuman Animals.

Veganism should not end with compassion and justice for Nonhuman Animals alone. If women or any other vulnerable group is being hurt by your consumption, it should also be questioned. I highly recommend this documentary and I hope that you will (after suitably preparing yourself for this potentially triggering material) watch, learn, and expand your activist imagination.  The next time you consider purchasing from LUSH, reconsider. Take a peek at Thistle Farms instead. We must understand oppression in terms of intersectionality, because all of these issues are entangled.

Film expires February 17, 2015. Streaming free online through PBS to American viewers. For viewers outside the U.S., try Hola, a free browser add-on.


Corey Lee WrennDr. Wrenn is Lecturer of Sociology. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology with Colorado State University in 2016. She received her M.S. in Sociology in 2008 and her B.A. in Political Science in 2005, both from Virginia Tech. She was awarded Exemplary Diversity Scholar, 2016 by the University of Michigan’s National Center for Institutional Diversity. She served as council member with the American Sociological Association’s Animals & Society section (2013-2016) and was elected Chair in 2018. She serves as Book Review Editor to Society & Animals and has contributed to the Human-Animal Studies Images and Cinema blogs for the Animals and Society Institute. She has been published in several peer-reviewed academic journals including the Journal of Gender Studies, Feminist Media Studies, Disability & Society, Food, Culture & Society, and Society & Animals. In July 2013, she founded the Vegan Feminist Network, an academic-activist project engaging intersectional social justice praxis. She is the author of A Rational Approach to Animal Rights: Extensions in Abolitionist Theory (Palgrave MacMillan 2016).

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As Long As It’s Vegan? Single-Issues, Silos, and Social Justice

Not Safe for work:  Contains semi-revealing images of nude woman.

LUSH "Go Naked" ad featuring four women standing naked, exposing their bottoms. Reads, "We prefer to go naked, like over 100 of our products"
LUSH Cosmetics advertisement

Single-issue campaigning and social movement siloing are toxic for social justice. Despite the veganism’s collective identity as a movement for love and compassion, it has a remarkable tendency to dismiss human injustices under the banner of “nonhumans first.” The “as long as it’s vegan” ideology has been used to protect nazism, rape, racism, and other manifestations of bigotry in the Nonhuman Animal rights movement, stifling critical thought and eliminating any chance for coalition-building.

What makes this ideology so insidious is that its adherents often believe themselves to be a compassionate activist committed to Nonhuman Animals at any cost. While this is, of course, admirable, it is also a self-concept which inhibits self-reflection. Because the movement is white-centric and post-citizen (meaning that most vegan activists already have a number of essential rights and privileges established for themselves), it becomes very difficult for them to acknowledge how many humans still lack these rights.

Woman used in LUSH demo pictured with cords attached to her head, she is gagged and wearing a nude suit

In one of several misogynistic live action advertisements, LUSH hired a street performer in a nude bodysuit to enact gruesome scenes of vivisection for approximately 10 hours.

This is aggravated by segregation; when privileged groups do not have to interact with disenfranchised groups, it is easy for them to ignore or downplay the experiences of others. Membership in a white-centric, middle-class social movement only reinforces these walls of separation.

Consider, for instance, this Irish grassroots group’s promotion of LUSH Cosmetics products on World Vegan Day. LUSH is known to regularly engage misogynistic tactics to scare or shame women into buying its products.  It also mirrors People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in prostituting women’s bodies to grab media attention and sell goods. The group announced that it would be leafleting outside the Cork LUSH store and accepting donations from LUSH for every “Charity Pot” lotion product that is purchased.

Please email for transcript of image

When confronted with LUSH’s misogynist business ethic, this local vegan community predictably employed a number of tropes to restore its positive self-image. First, it suggested that as long as individual women “choose” to participate, this supposedly absconds the organization that hosts the event as well as all involved parties from any responsibility for the negative consequences for women as a class.

Second, it is mistakenly argued that the inclusion of “men, too” would eliminate the misogyny of these tactics. But this falsely presumes that society is gender-neutral and that sexualized violent imagery of women would be interpreted equally with equal impact.

Third, for the purposes of this essay, this group also highlighted that the supposed animal-friendliness of the company trumped any misgivings about its misogyny. Nonhumans first.

As these deflections illustrate, there is a profound disconnect between the oppression of women and the oppression of other animals. The logic that normalizes the commodification and sexualization of violence against women is the same logic that normalizes the commodification and fetishization of violence against animals.

The vegan movement’s confusion over this intersection is all the more evident in its bizarre alliance with LUSH. LUSH is not a vegan company. It is a speciesist industry that profits from the the sale of Nonhuman Animals’ bodies, products, and labor. Bizarre though this relationship may be, it exemplifies how a movement culture that devalues intersectional awareness can undermine Nonhuman Animal interests. Putting “nonhumans first” may unwittingly be putting nonhumans last.

LUSH employee wearing nothing but an apron as part of an advertising campaign

LUSH often holds in-store promotions that feature its mostly female staff unclothed.

That activists appeal to the marketplace to support their single-issue focus is not surprising. I am of the persuasion that intersectional failure is intimately bound to capitalism and its intentional fanning of individualism and false consciousness. This ignorance is key for the perpetuation of an oppressive system. It undermines efforts for equality.

Any movement, faction, organization, or activist that fails to acknowledge the root cause of capitalism in manifesting inequality will never achieve its goals. By participating in capitalist enterprise, vegans only contribute to the humane-washing of an inherently violent economic system. For resource-starved grassroots groups, it is all too tempting to partner with speciesist industries who trade attention and platform for community approval and immunity from protest.

This trade-off is not a wise one. “As long as it’s vegan” does Nonhuman Animals no favors if it destroys the movement’s ability to be taken seriously as a social justice effort. Neither is it helpful if it normalizes frameworks of oppression, as these frameworks are not species-specific but universally dangerous.

 

 


Corey Lee WrennDr. Wrenn is Lecturer of Sociology. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology with Colorado State University in 2016. She received her M.S. in Sociology in 2008 and her B.A. in Political Science in 2005, both from Virginia Tech. She was awarded Exemplary Diversity Scholar, 2016 by the University of Michigan’s National Center for Institutional Diversity. She served as council member with the American Sociological Association’s Animals & Society section (2013-2016) and was elected Chair in 2018. She serves as Book Review Editor to Society & Animals and has contributed to the Human-Animal Studies Images and Cinema blogs for the Animals and Society Institute. She has been published in several peer-reviewed academic journals including the Journal of Gender Studies, Feminist Media Studies, Disability & Society, Food, Culture & Society, and Society & Animals. In July 2013, she founded the Vegan Feminist Network, an academic-activist project engaging intersectional social justice praxis. She is the author of A Rational Approach to Animal Rights: Extensions in Abolitionist Theory (Palgrave MacMillan 2016).

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