Page 23 - Black Velvet Magazine Issue 107

BV107 pg22-27 Alissa White-Gluz Interview.qxp_BV107 pg23 30/11/2022 20:13 Page 2

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Black Velvet: What do you remember about the day that you became vegan? What made
you become vegan after being brought up vegetarian?
Alissa White-Gluz: I was always against animal cruelty. I basically just realised that,
even though it’s really not highlighted that the dairy and egg industry also kill and tor-
ture animals, I just made the connection that they do. I was starting to become a
teenager myself and starting to understand how the female body works, and how the
reproductive system works, and I realised that the dairy and egg industries were nothing
more than complete exploitation of the female reproductive system. I didn’t want any
part of that, so I realised, ‘No, no, no, there’s no way to have milk or eggs without killing
and hurting animals,’ and so that was the principal that I’ve always lived by. I just
dropped it. I thought, ‘I’m not going to support this,’ and I just dropped those foods
from my diet immediately.

Black Velvet: In ‘The Eagle Flies Alone’ (from ‘Will To Power’) you sing, ‘When I was
born, the seed was sown, I will not obey, my life is my own’. Being vegetarian from birth,
was it ever hard at school? Did you have to say no when it came to eating or anything?
Alissa White-Gluz: It was not hard, but that was in the 90s, basically. I just packed my
lunch and I went to school. My mom made me delicious healthy lunches to bring to
school. That was normal for me to go to school with a nice, healthy, vegetarian lunch.
There were a few times when the other kids didn’t understand and they would bring
their meat lunches close to me and one of the biggest things I don’t think people un-
derstand is that that’s not tempting, it’s disgusting. It’s not like you’re going to tempt
me to eat that because I don’t want to eat that. I don’t want to be near it, I don’t want to
smell it, I don’t want to see it, I don’t want to touch it. Other kids didn’t really understand.
The teachers even really didn’t understand some of the time. Sometimes there would
be Class Pizza Day or something and I would just refrain from eating it. I would eat my
normal lunch, which was better anyway, so… it wasn’t really difficult. To me, it was just
normal and natural. I didn’t find anything challenging, personally. I guess maybe to oth-
ers it would seem that way. To me, it just seemed normal.

Black Velvet: We love ‘The Eagle Flies Alone’, especially where you sing, ‘I go my own
way, I swim against the stream’ – because so many people just do what everyone else
does and don’t question anything. It must’ve helped having a vegetarian mother to in-

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