Fur Enough (Would You Ever Wear Fur?)

Member Name: skittle

Product:	Would You Ever Wear Fur?
Date:	12/11/07 (147 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: It's gorgeous

Disadvantages: It looks better on the animal

I don’t think I’m going to make many friends with this review, to be honest, but I’m going to write it anyway. You see, for a vegetarian I think I’ve got pretty unusual views on some things, wearing fur is probably one of them. Personally, I don’t see wearing fur as the problem – yes, it’s a catalyst for more people to see fur, like it and want to buy it, but not wearing fur that you already own once animals have died for it would be pointless. Worse than pointless, it really would mean that they’d have died for nothing. No, in my opinion it’s not wearing fur that’s the problem, it’s buying it in the first place. But it goes deeper than that; it’s the designers who use it in their clothes that are causing the problem, fuelling the desire for fur, especially when there are so many good imitation furs around nowadays.

Of course, it could also be argued that imitation furs are all part of the problem – nowadays they really are so hard to tell apart from real fur that some unscrupulous characters have been smuggling dog fur into the UK, calling it faux fur. This was something I saw a while ago on Watchdog. Even if you do buy genuine faux fur to wear, isn’t that also fuelling the trend for fur? People who see your faux fur don’t usually know if it’s real or not, so it may very well have the same effect as real fur – you see it, you want it.

I struggle a lot with the morality of wearing fur. In some ways it’s no worse than wearing leather, suede or sheepskin – they’re all the skin of an animal, an animal has had to die for you to wear their skin. As a vegetarian I still wear leather shoes, mainly because plastic shoes or shoes made from fabric are not only more expensive, but also less durable (fabric) or don’t allow you’re feet to breathe (plastic). So, then, it would be hypocritical of me to criticize somebody for wearing fur, essentially the skin of an animal, when I’m doing exactly the same thing on my own feet.

However, if you look at the flipside of the same coin, the leather from the cow that died to make my shoes was a by-product of the meat industry. The cow died to feed people and animals, primarily, the leather was a side effect, if you like. Morally, surely, this is better than the chinchillas’ that are killed purely and simply to make somebody an exquisitely cut fur bolero, the rest of the body discarded as waste?

I also wonder if the outcry against the fur trade would be as strenuous if the animals involved weren’t mainly small, cute and fluffy. As I mentioned earlier we use sheep and cow skins far more than we do fur in this Country, but you don’t hear the same outcry against wearing leather. Is it because cows aren’t cute and cuddly? Or is there some other reason I’m missing that makes it more acceptable to wear the skin of one animal than another? I honestly don’t know the answer to this one.

On the other hand, there are countries where it’s so damn cold that wearing fur is a normal part of every day life, how can you criticize people for that? If you were in Russia being frozen half to death on the back of a Troika would you turn down a fur throw to keep you warm? I doubt I would.

I could go on and on about this subject, but I still don’t think I’d ever come to a real conclusion, I just don’t know. Who am I to say if wearing fur is right or wrong, if some animals’ skins are worth more, morally, than others, or if anybody else should wear fur for that matter. It’s a huge argument and could go on for a very long time. What I do know, though, is that personally I couldn’t wear fur with an easy conscience.

So, my answer will have to be No, other than in extremely unexpected instances I don’t think I would ever wear fur.

Summary: Not for me.