Text 17A

Fur
and against
… Our most distant ancestors came through the Ice and dim, new-age absolutists.
Age without going black with frostbite because they The argument against fur has
wore second-hand skin: fur. We are, as I’m sure even always been more about class
the least perceptive of you will have noticed, nude and money than about dumb
underneath our pyjamas. Naked apes. We don’t have critters. Fur, restricted to the
enough hair, fur, fluff or feathers to deflect even the point of prohibitive expense,
finest drizzle. We shiver in pathetically bald bodies is now symbolic of wealth
and power.
for a reason – and the reason is that we look better in
Enough. A number of
suede than cows do. …
furriers are now taking back
the morality of skin. They

W
e shed our their relationship with are mostly from the north
thick short animals – vegetarians who – Scandinavia, Greenland,
and curlies got religion, a few people Russia and Iceland –
because it who swept the street in where fur has always been
was our natural selection, front of them so as not to a practical business in a
our destiny, our personal hurt a flightless fly – but the most practical part of the
ecology, and instead gained majority of us, the vast, vast world. In Denmark, fur is an
those uniquely human majority, have gone on eating agricultural business. That
attributes: taste and vanity. anything dumb enough famously dictatorial, cruel
We wore other species’ skins to taste good with chips, and authoritarian society
when they had no further and squashing cockroaches farms more mink than any
Part 5
use for them, and we’ve been wherever possible. But that other country, and it does
doing it for a long time. How odd prejudice, the fatwa on so in conditions that most
fur went from being practical fur, has become automatic Danish pigs could only
and chic, stylish and sensible and universal in our select dream of. Of all the animals
for 100,000 years, and then all and ethically compromised that we kill for our personal
of a sudden became the coat bit of the First World. The use, mink have by far and
of shame in the past decade, virulence and viciousness away the easiest passing: well
is one of the oddest about- of fur vigilantes mean that fed and unstressed, they’re
faces in all civilisation. few of us now brave the gently gassed.
There have always been spittle-flecked venom of self- One of my favourite
people who are funny about righteous pressure groups shops is a remarkable

© Cambridge University Press 2010 Unit 17 Fur and against 97

 furrier in Reykjavik. Eggert fish farms like water foxes. – and all caused by cotton.
Johannsson makes beautiful, The seals have gone from […] Compared with a cotton
sensible clothes out of pelts. being valuable, protected shirt, a fur coat is morally
He is a missionary for what and plentiful, to being blameless.
he calls ‘ethical fur’: well waterborne vermin and The most poignant
sourced, responsibly farmed endangered, because we have argument for fur is not where
and humanely culled. removed their value thanks it comes from, or who first
Seals, for instance. The to ignorant squeamishness wore it; it’s what it looks like
European Union is debating and class politics. and how it feels. A polyamide
whether to ban sealskin coat connects you to an oil

T
on anyone except a seal. In he argument goes that well and a factory; fur joins
Greenland, hunting them once we may have you to your heritage. It is
is the subsistence income of needed fur, but now 100,000 years of history and
the east coast. It’s what they we don’t; we have, instead, culture. We wear fur because
do. It’s what they’ve always technology. Well, leaving it is our story. If you haven’t
done. There is nothing else aside the aesthetics of real, put on a fur coat recently,
to do. There is nothing else. I assume you all know how or ever, try it. Cast aside
They can’t grow cut flowers polymers such as nylon, your prejudice and feel it.
instead. In Iceland, parts polyester, Terylene and so on You can sense it’s not simply
of the shore where the seals are made. That they use fossil a statement of fashion,
congregate were sold as fuels, and intensely polluting wealth or even warmth; the
agricultural assets. Farmers processes that involve some connection is ancient, truly
would facilitate the natural of the most toxic chemicals visceral. Fur is the cover, the
seal colonies, protecting on the planet. … I’ve been binding, of our long, long,
them from predators, and there. I’ve seen the greatest story. And if you’re still not
once a year they’d cull them. environmental disaster on the convinced, then would you
But since the seal market has globe, greater than an armful for a moment consider your
collapsed, so have the care of runways or nuclear bombs, own cushions, your pillow.
and value of the shoreline, worse than deforestation or The feathers inside, the bird
and so have the seals. All any city’s urban sprawl: the fur, where do you imagine
over the North Sea, their murder of the Aral Sea in that came from? How do
populations are fluctuating. central Asia by the drying-up you imagine all that duck
They’re caught in fishing of the Oxus River, reducing and goose skin was gleaned?
nets, shot by fishermen. an area the size of Denmark I’d hate for you to be a
They hang around ports and to a toxic, salted dust bowl hypocrite. Sleep well.

Source: AA Gill, Sunday Times, 7th December 2008.

98 Unit 17 Fur and against © Cambridge University Press 2010