TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/121889/12188900.001

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 6.2 KB | 117 lines

                                                                                LIVING, Page 72

The Furor over Wearing Furs


Assailed by animal rightists, many women face a difficult choice


    When Anna La Barbera, a 33-year-old psychotherapist from
White Plains, N.Y., bought a silver fox coat in 1984, she did
so with joy and absolutely no hesitation. She would like to
replace the aging fur, however, and she is in a quandary.
"There's nothing like the warmth of fur," she says. But her
physician husband is concerned about animal rights, and the
arguments of anti-fur activists have moved her. "I've been
struggling with the dilemma of buying fur," says La Barbera. "I
like the look, but I feel real guilty." She is now shopping for
good-quality wool coats as well as for furs.

    La Barbera's dilemma is increasingly common among American
women. Until recently, owning a fur coat, usually a mink, was
an unquestioned emblem of luxury and social status. But lately
a growing cadre of animal-rights activists has been
aggressively denouncing such garments as "sadist symbols" that,
they say, require the deaths of some 70 million helpless
creatures each year (about 50 minks for each coat). That
emotional claim has touched off a bitter battle that pits the
animal lobby against fur owners and an increasingly embattled
fur industry. So nasty have the hostilities become that in some
cities around the country women wearing furs are being publicly
jeered or otherwise harassed.

    Animal-rights groups have steadily gathered force. Last
month Trans-Species Unlimited, an animal activist organization,
staged its fourth annual Fur-Free Friday in 90 cities across the
nation. In New York City some 3,000 protesters, led by perennial
TV game-show host Bob Barker, marched down Fifth Avenue carrying
signs and taunting fur-coat wearers with shouts of "Shame!" Says
Barker, who resigned last year as host of the Miss Universe
pageant because contestants wore fur: "We want people wearing
fur to be embarrassed when they walk into a restaurant. Fur is
obscene, fur is cruel, and fur is archaic." Two weeks ago, the
city council in Aspen, Colo., voted to put on the ballot an
initiative that would ban the sale of fur in the trendy resort
town. Says Aspen Mayor Bill Stirling: "As a community, we don't
want to earn our sales-tax dollars from cruelty to animals."

    The furor has also hit the media. A recent segment of the
popular TV series L.A. Law involved a furrier who sued an
animal-rights group for ruining his business. The show aired
gruesome video clips of animals caught in brutal leg traps. On
an upcoming episode of Designing Women, narcissistic Suzanne
Sugarbaker is mauled by anti-fur activists. When Atlanta disk
jockey Scott Woodside this month mentioned that he had bought
his wife a mink coat, listeners deluged his station with calls.
The result was an informal poll in which the anti-fur forces
carried the day, 702 to 684. Said Woodside: "I was extremely
surprised."

    While most anti-fur groups work by moral persuasion, a few
animal activists have adopted extreme, even criminal tactics to
advance their cause. In New York City they have sprayed coats
with paint. On Fur-Free Friday several fur shops were vandalized
in Miami and Fort Lauderdale. In Europe anti-fur commandos have
even attacked fur wearers to gain attention. Their campaigns
have succeeded in depressing fur sales in Britain, Holland and
West Germany. Diana, Princess of Wales, has publicly stated that
she will no longer wear furs.

    The fur industry maintains that mink, which account for 75%
of U.S. fur coats, are treated humanely and killed painlessly.
Fur, the industry points out, is a natural fabric whose
production does not pollute the environment or use fossil fuels,
as does the creation of acrylic fibers. Nonetheless, U.S. fur
sales have remained stagnant -- at an annual level of about $1.8
billion -- over the past three years; during the Christmas
season, many department stores are slashing prices to move their
furs. To meet the animal-rights threat, the Fur Information
Council of America last month launched an ad campaign stressing
freedom of choice: "Today fur. Tomorrow leather. Then wool. Then
meat." Bernard Groger, co-publisher of the trade magazine Fur
World, says, "Nobody can tell the American woman what to wear."
Warns Seattle furrier Nicholas Benson: "You're seeing signs of
terrorism. People are afraid to wear furs on the streets because
of what might happen."

    Many women -- and fur-wearing men too -- are starting to
think twice before they shrug on a fur and nip off to the office
or the grocery store. Ever since she was called "animal killer"
on the street, Susan Singer, a Manhattan executive, has been
ambivalent about wearing her fur coat. So is New York
department-store employee Suzanne Pandjiris, who still wears her
mink but fears attacks by protesters. "It makes me nervous," she
says.

    Moved by ethical concerns, a number of former fur lovers
have defected to the other side. Davida Terry, a Lincolnshire,
Ill., advertising executive, has kept her eight fur coats hidden
in a closet ever since a chiding by an animal-rights supporter
caused her to have a change of heart. "How could anyone wear a
fur coat?" she now says. "How these animals have to suffer!"
Last week, as a gesture of support, Chicago secretary Kathi
Hodowal turned over her eight-year-old mink coat to
Trans-Species, which uses such donations to stage mock funerals
with fur-filled coffins. Explains Hodowal: "I just decided to
give up my fur coat. It's so cruel to animals."

    Other women stubbornly refuse to be intimidated. Chicago
art-gallery owner Eva-Maria Worthington, for instance, does not
hesitate to wrap herself in beaver against the winds on the
Magnificent Mile. "If they're so concerned about animals," she
sniffs, "I think they should go to a pound and clean cages and
take care of the dogs and cats. Some people have replaced their
religion with animal rights." But it's a jungle out there: even
women who have switched to fake furs to assuage their conscience
do not feel comfortable. Many protectively wear large buttons
that proclaim NO FUR or REAL PEOPLE WEAR FAKE FUR.