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Feminists who are also vegan aren't having the best time of it lately. In Our Fair City of Portland, the nation's first vegan strip club has opened. Casa Diablo features a faux-meat-rich Mexican menu and a slate of mostly vegetarian and vegan dancers who are prohibited from wearing leather, silk, or wool (now that sounds itchy). Notes longtime "ethical vegan" and the club's owner, Johnny Diablo, in a local-Fox-affiliate KPTV piece, “We put the meat on the pole, not on the plate.” Delightful.

Meanwhile, over at Salon, Julie Klausner has posted a heartfelt (if not elegantly written) screed against Skinny Bitch, the vegan call-to-arms by a former model and a former modeling agent that, ever since it was seen in the stick-arms of Posh Spice, has been surfing a groundswell of popularity. Klausner rightly calls out the book for its deceptive marketing tactics (since the book doesn't really want to make you "skinny," but to convert you to veganism) and, more importantly, its abusive tone:

[T]he authors' advice accounts for much of the book's humor, including quips like "you need to exercise, you lazy shit," "coffee is for pussies" and "don't be a fat pig anymore." It was a formerly anorexic friend of mine who nailed it when she read excerpts from the book. "When you have an eating disorder," she told me, "that's the voice you hear in your head all the time."

The hard-ass drill sergeant approach may be helping Skinny Bitch's authors to convert readers to their ethical eating point of view, but for women with body image issues, being called a "pig" is fighting words.