When Sweet Is Sad and Adorable Is Ironic

by Stephanie Ernst · 2009-09-06 07:44:00 UTC
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At the Sustainable Food blog last week, substitute blogger Mike posted a photo that instantly made me sad. I assume, of course, that it was intended to be--and that most see it as--adorable. And there are photos out there of cute, chubby-cheeked kids and sweet-faced, beautiful cows that would bring out my "aww" reflex. But this isn't one of them.

Because I'm an animal advocate, or rather because of what I know as an animal advocate, what I see in this photo is great irony and sadness. I see an adorable, surely much-loved young boy whose parents would certainly protect him fiercely and at all costs. And across from him I see an an equally feeling (but numbered) being who  will be denied that chance at family over and over again, who will never have that deeply desired chance to protect and love her own children. That morning, the toddler's parents likely served him a glass of milk with his breakfast, for which cows just like this one not only suffer and die but also cry out as their own babies are whisked away for brutal slaughter (the same brutal slaughter for which they are eventually destined as well).

We take kids to see farmed animals at fairs and farms as such, and we encourage them to look at the animals, to observe them, to touch them (don't worry--they're gentle, we explain). But we do not tell them the truth about what has happened, is happening, and will happen to that very same gentle animal after the family has moved along. We present our own children to these animals, expecting them to regale and entertain our young ones, while we systematically and repeatedly rip away their own children--their babies--and kill them.

And there's something so terribly sad, so terribly wrong about that.

The "aww" photos for me are the ones taken at sanctuaries, where animals are living out their lives in safety, and where people are educated about who they are, as our fellow animals and as unique individuals--with histories, friendships, grudges, likes, dislikes, joys, fears, thoughts, and deeply felt emotions--not about what we can selfishly get from them.

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Photo by Flickr user Diane Neile

Stephanie Ernst wrote the original Animal Rights blog at Change.org until December 2009. She can now be found at Animal Rights & AntiOppression.
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