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November 1997 Editorial: Lightbulbs Not Flashbulbs By Martin Rowe

 

It's hard not to strike a sour note after more than 10 years of concerted efforts against the killing of animals for fur. As we roll around to another Fur Free Friday, the fur industry is claiming that it's enjoying the second year of growth after the drastic losses of the late 1980s/early 1990s. The New York Times recently claimed, on its front page, that magazines, stores and designers are feeling positive about the possibilities of fur, and are pouring money into advertising that fact.

That's part of the problem -- determining what's true amid the hype and the hoopla from an industry notorious for exaggeration and illusion. Certainly, after the crashes, there are fewer fur outlets making more money rather than more outlets making less. Add to that an apparently booming economy -- for whom? might be an apt question -- and a fashion cycle that matches the zeitgeist of conspicuous consumption with the flaunting of insouciant carelessness, and you have a formula for more fur coats on the streets.

Is this what it's all come to -- 10 years of protests, photo ops, celebrities and mythical spray paint? Yes, humans are a particularly venal species, and the fashion industry would promote the skins of baby humans as well as those of non-human babies if someone declared them "in" and there was money to be made. And yes, the billion dollar fur industry is going to buy up all the editorial copy it can with its advertising until it's convinced even itself the animal movement is not entirely blameless. It's been a decade of courted celebrities throwing off their furs only for some to put them on again; a decade of protesting that fur is unfashionable, of shouting "shame," or that real women don't wear fur or that fur makes you look fat. A decade later, people are still fearful that their fur coats will be spray-painted or that they'll be shouted at on the streets, with still not a thought for the one reality that should lie at the center of the issue -- the animals themselves.

I'm not so naive as to believe that there would be no fur industry to speak of today if all we'd done is stand on a sidewalk and hold pictures of the animals alive on fur "farms" or caught in ugly, painful leghold traps for 10 years. There'd still have been 10 years of someone complaining that your vinyl shoes were leather, or assuming you ate meat, or wondering whether you were pro-choice, or why you didn't have a life or a job, and they'd have got riled up and stalked away. But at least they would have seen the animal, and perhaps realized in the end that it didn't matter what they thought about you, whether you were self-righteous or hypocritical or fanatical or whatever. What would have mattered was that they were responsible for that animal's death (and many more than one, given the numbers of pelts it takes to make a coat), and that they'd have to live with the consequences of that knowledge. Perhaps for the first time, they'd have recognized that what we do to animals involves a choice -- and that might have got them thinking about other choices they make.

In the end, that's what it surely should all come to -- thinking about choices. Whether Naomi Campbell does or does not wear fur may amuse the cynical and mindless media. Frankly, I couldn't care less, because like most people I don't consider Naomi Campbell my moral arbiter, and I don't understand why we should believe that what models do or not do will change why we treat animals the way we do. What animal advocates should be aiming for is not the cheap photo op, or the racking up of another celeb, or the dumb slogan. For, when all the flashes have gone off, and we've been temporarily blinded by the glamour of it all, we're still left in the dark. It's lightbulbs above people's heads not in their eyes that we want.

That's not to say our methods of enlightening people have to be dull and humorless. That's not to say the fashion industry will have a crisis of conscience and discover morality: as New York magazine recently noted, the fashion industry has none. Indeed, it took the federal government to ban the use of feather accessories earlier this century when fashion threatened to bring about the mass extinction of several species of exotic birds. We've got to be clear about this: an industry that would present as its paradigm of radiant beauty an anorexic, heroin-addicted, sexually available pubescent girl has no interest in anything life affirming or respectful. But we don't have to play along with that paradigm to change it. We have to inform people on the street without insulting their intelligence or belittling their compassion. We have to consider them as potential allies not as enemies. We have to coordinate our efforts, so that carefully planned and well-supported civil disobedience is in tune with responsible, informative demonstrations and campaigns. We need to have a strategy for the next five or ten years and not the next five weeks. Above all, we need to put the animals in the center of our language and our posters. For, in the end, if we keep returning to the animals -- after all the diversions and divisions that those who do not want to hear about what happens to animals take us through -- we will succeed. And we'll change a lot more than what people choose to wear on their backs.

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