After watching New York Fashion Week YouTube videos, I realized that we have to accept fur for what it is:
Beautiful.
That’s hard to accept when wearing fur means slaughtering cute, furry animals in the name of fashion.
Everyone knows that the path to exhibiting a chinchilla’s skin on a runway model isn’t pretty. But when the thought that, maybe, fur is gorgeous inevitably arises, it’s chastised as the thought of an inhumane dirtbag. To even start believing that there might be inherent beauty in fur is to be exiled from the realm of “decent human beings.” What follows with every subsequent—and natural—thought is shame.
From the point of view of an animal lover (99.99% of people), it would be insensitive to admit that fur looks great. But when you see North West in a fabulous mink coat, you cannot deny the swag.
Asking fur–wearers to take an honest look at where their fur comes from is hypocritical if you can’t be honest about the gorgeous fur aesthetic.
Loving fur doesn’t mean ignoring the slaughtering practices behind your rabbit vest. We need to stop screwing up generations of little silver fox families and fur–farming altogether. I’m pretty sure we shouldn’t agree with where Karl Lagerfeld’s logic inevitably leads: “In a meat–eating world...the discussion of fur is childish.”Therefore, it’s okay to not talk about how minks are beaten into bloody carcasses.
But this statement is obvious. The harder truth to admit is one you must admit to yourself: All bludgeoning aside, isn't it amazing how a silver fox’s grey fur magically transforms into illuminating, fluttering columns of white with each strut of the runway model.
In order to defend the lives of animals, we have to start with being honest. In order to do that, those of us against fur have to start accepting the parts of ourselves that may not be completely PC. If anything, the fur issue is an opportunity to face the part of ourselves that doesn’t make any sense—to understand that we all have a part that is ignorant, and that’s difficult to admit. Confronting the fur issue head–on is to face who you truly are.
It isn’t really fur that should be defended, but rather the ability to accept that fur is beautiful should be. It’s the ability to accept that wearing fur is both a daily exhibition of extreme horror and extreme aesthetic. Understanding that is to understand where fur–wearers are coming from.
Being honest about fur’s beauty is the hard starting point. What comes next, and is even harder to face, is whether we care enough about the cute little animal families enough to stop buying fur.
