TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/121889/12188900.001

Text File | 1990-09-19 | 6KB | 107 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.