Why I won't wear fur...

Once in another life, a long, long time ago, I almost bought a sealskin jacket. It was beautiful. There was something in my soul that said it wasn't right, or right for me. I didn't buy it. And then there was that fox hat which framed my face with a rusty halo and looked chic as can be. I tried it on. I couldn't buy it. What I really wanted was to give that fox another chance at life. I put it down. I couldn't buy it. That was way back in the '60s.

I dated a guy - my hairdresser - a few times. He's probably responsible for me not going bald from a really bad episode with a bottle of Clairol and chlorinated pools during summer. We went shopping once to buy a blanket for his bed - made out of rabbit hides. I remember that it was black. And bleak. Very soft - rabbits are...but I left thinking - "How many rabbits?"

I was anti-fur before it became fashionable. It's a moral and ethical decision that each of us has to make.

Sometimes I miss the taste of veal. But I haven't had veal since the last meal of it my mother made for me, probably during my teen years. That was even a longer time ago. Veal is a no-no because of the conditions in which vealer calves are kept.

Call me a hypocrite. I guess I am. I eat meat. I wear leather shoes.

And sometimes I wish I were vegan.

But I'm not.

I won't buy fur. Or wear it. Way, way back, I remember playing with two fur pieces my mother stored (pieces of her young womanhood) in the bottom drawer of her dresser. Buried down at the bottom with her flapper wedding dress, were a squirrel and a fox. I guess it was fox. It was red. They had dead, glass eyes, and tiny feet with the pads and nails still there. They had clips to fasten them with crocheted satin cord covers. I played dress up. I was such a grand lady, standing there, rubbing the pelts against my cheek. So soft.

When Uncle Howie died, my aunt bought herself a mink stole, which my mother thought was tasteless and extravagant; the furpieces long gone from her dresser drawer. I don't think she was jealous - but I'm thinking back, and she may not have liked the idea of fur. But for the squirrel and the fox, there was never fur in our house, and we were all a family who loved animals.

So I come to this. In an already troubled world, there is always more. More cruelty that stretches the mind to its limits. How can people be so cruel?

DO NOT watch this video with your children unless they are old enough to understand cruelty.

Again, I applaud these undercover documentarians of any organization, or those who do this independently, for the heartbreaking work they do. It is dangerous and ugly, and I understand the mindset and the nerves of steel you must have, when you really want to choke the living crap out of the person who is perpetrating the act, or turn implements of torture on the person inflicting such pain and death. You can't stop because there's so much to do...uncover one fire at a time, expose it and hope to God that one more person understands human cruelty and will talk to another about it.

This is not a popular subject; it's just reality. And we perpetuate it by buying little furry fuzzies from China at the discount store, or an Armani fur. It's all the same, no matter what animal it comes from (including my leather handbags and my shoes). I am not trying to compare or separate necessity from excess. But if you stood in the slaughterhouses of excess, would you really love that fur so much. Wouldn't it really look better on the living animal?



Find out more about Armani on peta.org.