Vegetarians on TV
The Web site Fancast has put up a list of television’s best and worst shows in the treatment and portrayal of animals. The list was compiled by Beverly Kaskey, the senior director of the Hollywood branch of the Humane Society of the United States. There are some interesting choices on there.
The list got me thinking about vegetarian characters on TV shows, and I realized I could think of only a couple. Lisa from “The Simpsons” is the one that first sprung to mind. Angela on “The Office” is another (she’s also a huge cat lover). But beyond those, I couldn’t think of any currently on the air. Phoebe was a vegetarian on “Friends.” In the Australian Outback season of “Survivor,” Kimmie being a vegetarian caused drama in the camp and also during one of their unfortunate gross-food challenges. (She wouldn’t eat the first item she was supposed to because it was a mammal, so the other team chose her to represent her team during the tie-breaker—but she rejoiced when the item to eat turned out to be a worm, which she determined was OK to eat, so she won the challenge for her team. I know that a lot of vegetarians still wouldn’t have eaten a worm.)
I wish there were more prominent vegetarian characters on television. I think that would help a lot in showing vegetarianism as a more mainstream lifestyle choice. I believe that when people are exposed to something on TV on a weekly basis, it can help educate them and make them more comfortable with it in real life—as long as it’s portrayed positively or neutrally and not as an object of ridicule.
I don’t watch most shows that are out there, so I’m sure there are probably some vegetarian TV characters I’m unaware of. Do you know any that I haven’t mentioned? Do you think TV does a good job of portraying vegetarianism? Or is it still portrayed as a “radical” lifestyle choice?
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