I wonder why the people of Stylelist are so anal-retentive? Seriously, Stylelist, you need to get over yourselves already.

I ADORE Leighton Meester! Her style and her makeup are always on point. So refreshing that she uses drugstore products! Big fan of drugstore mascara too! :D

You know...even back in the olden days, when I worked and actually had disposable income, it NEVER occurred to me to buy mascara or any other cosmetics, frankly, at a department store. I've been buying drugstore makeup for 40 years now and I look as good as ever. I cannot imagine paying for a Dior item other than perfume, really, it boggles the mind. I don't know how the department store makeup counters stay in business - there must be hordes of suckers with low self-esteem who have money to blow on that stuff. My money? Goes for food, gas, and charity.

Leighton Meester is beautiful! Let us hope all of her purchases are cruelty-free!

As a secular moral philosophy, ethical vegetarianism and purchasing only cruelty-free consumer products are comparable to economic boycotting -- a political tactic used by liberals and conservatives alike.

In The Case for Animal Riqhts, Dr. Tom Regan observes:

"The rights view is not antagonistic to business, free enterprise, the market mechanism, and the like. What the rights view is antagonistic to is the view that consumers owe it to any business to purchase that business's goods or services. The animal industry is no exception."

According to Dr. Regan:

"The rights view's denunciation of standard toxicity tests on animals is not antibusiness. It does not deny any manufacturer the liberty to introduce any new product into the marketplace, to compete with the others already there, and to sink or swim in the waters of free enterprise.

"All that the rights view denies is that the toxicity of any new product may be pretested on animals in ways harmful to them. Nonanimal alternatives are not ruled out by the rights view. On the contrary, their development should be encouraged, both on the grounds of the public interest and because of the legitimate legal interests of the manufacturers.

"Nor is the rights view antiscientific," concludes Dr. Regan. "It places the scientific challenge before pharmacologists and related scientists: find scientifically valid ways that serve the public interest without violating individual rights."

Abolitionists are almost always accused of being anti-capitalist by the very industries they attack. Social progress means change. The invention of the automobile and the end of the Second World War brought about radical change in the work place.

Anti-abolitionists claimed that the end of human slavery would bring with it the collapse of the economic structure of the Southern United States. In his book, The Status of Animals in the Christian Religion, author C.W. Hume noted:

"The major cruelties practiced on animals in civilized countries today arise out of commercial exploitation, and the fear of losing profits is the chief obstacle to reform."

In her book, The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery, on the issue of animal experimentation, Marjorie Spiegel explains:

"Many of these experiments are completely non-medical in nature, being done to test out new hair sprays, oven cleaners, shampoos, etc. for toxicity. A myriad of alternatives to using live animals in research exist -- many often superior to methods employing animals -- making current practices an archaic holdover from a less sophisticated era, fairly calling back to the days of dungeons and sweat-boxes.

"Furthermore, billions of tax-dollars are spent each year to literally torture animals -- supposedly for our benefit --while many humans in this country lack access to even basic health care."

The Feminists for Animal Rights (FAR) newsletter (Vol. VI, Nos. 1-2, l991) substantiates Ms. Spiegel's observations by citing John Robbins' EarthSave organization as stating that taxpayer subsidies to the livestock industry in California for 1991 totaled $24 million, while the yearly budget for child welfare was only $125,000.

The number of animals killed for food in the United States is nearly 75 times larger than the number of animals killed in laboratories, 30 times larger than the number killed by hunters and trappers, and 500 times larger than the number of animals killed in animal pounds.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is challenging those who think they can still be "meat-eating environmentalists" to go veg, if they really care about the planet.

peta2 is now the largest youth movement of any social change organization in the world.

peta2 has 267,000 friends on MySpace and 91,000 Facebook fans.

A few years ago, PETA was the top-ranked charity when a poll asked teenagers what nonprofit group they would most want to work for. PETA won by more than a 2 to 1 margin over the second place finisher, The American Red Cross, with more votes than the Red Cross and Habitat for Humanity combined.

“If anyone wants to save the planet,” says Paul McCartney in a PETA interview, “all they have to do is stop eating meat. That’s the single most important thing you could do.

"It’s staggering when you think about it. Vegetarianism takes care of so many things in one shot: ecology, famine, cruelty. Let’s do it! Linda was right. Going veggie is the single best idea for the new century.”