FASHION VICTIMS
IS IT RIGHT TO COMMIT A MURDER FOR A FUR??
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Present a detailed, critical analysis of a cultural text.
«I’d rather go naked than wear fur» was the Persons of Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) campaign. A big moral statement supporting animal rights, going against real fur production trying to make people think outside the box. PETA used celebrities to pass this message across because most people nowadays are copying their style in an attempt to be like them. Real fur sales have surpassed the number of 10 billion dollars over the last year. This fact is making the debate for animal rights more important and raising the questions: Does fashion industry have a moral responsibility across animal rights? Is fashion Industry moral? Are animals fashion victims or a mean for human purposes? One symbolic phrase pushing us in an exploration to the moral dimension of fashion industry and the importance of animal rights. Peter Singer, philosopher and may the most active supporter of animal rights, claims that humans and animals are equal and they must have the same rights. All of his arguments are based on human life, acts and behavior compared in animal behavior.
For example animals are sentient, they feel pain, pleasure and they have the same circle of life like humans do. They are born, raised, hunt for their food, try to survive, get old and finally die. Animals and humans have a lot of similarities so why they can’t have same rights and treatment also? Singer also fell Kant’s theory where many people support it: animals can’t being rational, autonomous, or able to act morally so they aren’t equal to humans. He insist that either all people can be rational, autonomous or moral. Humans come in different shapes and sizes, they have a different language, amounts, feelings and sensitivity, different moral capacities and abilities. Singer state characteristic: ‘’In short, if the demand for equality were based on the actual equality of all human beings, we would have to stop demanding equality.’’ So why we have direct moral status to humans and not to animals? Why it is wrong to hurt, skinned alive or kill a human being and is right to make it to animals?
All PETA’s mottos have common approaches with Peter Singer moral philosophy. PETA is giving a huge fight for animal rights with the main motto “Animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, use for entertainment, or abuse in any way”. Some wise people said that we are what we wear. With this sceptical PETA is struggling every day through public education, cruelty investigations, research, animal rescue, legislation, special events, celebrity involvement, and protest campaigns to make people think outside the box and stop wearing the skin of another alive being. All the followers of PETA believe that we have direct moral status across to animals. They come against fashion industry stating that if they had only two choices, be naked or wear fur, they prefer to be naked rather harm an innocent animal.
Fashion Industry goes with Kant theory. Kant theory is that animals are «mere means and instruments» and they are unequal to humans. Killing animals for them it isn’t unethical because they serve a human purpose. They believe that we only have direct duties to humanity not to animals. Additionally they believe that from the moment where animals don’t have the fluency to talk, think or act like humans they aren’t equal to them. As long fur provides money and beauty to people animals must give their life for this purpose. This act for them is natural and necessary. Based on this theory fashion Industry accomplishes to make original furs one of the most prized markets. Fashion also supports that real is always better than fake.
‘‘Real fur is a natural sustainable product, delivering rare benefits in sustaining fragile habitats and communities.’’ Ms Martin.
Many designers choose to close their eyes and hearts in order to grow their money incomes passing the idea to consumers that, wearing fur grants them a higher status, power and elegance. They dazzled them with beautiful elegant products hiding the bloody truth. Hiding that statically over 55 million of animals skin alive, beat to death, drown, gassed, poison, electrocuted or neck – break without the use of any anaesthetic word-wide each year. Some fashion designers like Marc Jacobs sell real fur labelled as faux fur. Where is the honesty? Where is the moral on this? Also some other fashion designers like Frank Zilberkweit’s (the owner and managing director of the British fur label, Hockley), words was:
- "In a meat-eating world, wearing leather for shoes and clothes and even handbags, the discussion of fur is childish."
- "I think the reality has nothing to do with animal rights so much as the fur trade's inability to modernise itself."
This job is an honourable job that we could fight not to disappear? Is Frank Zilberkweit’s ideology right? We must wear a corpse in our back to modernise ourselves?
Nowadays, technology presents many alternatives for fur. The best and most popular alternative to real fur is faux fur. Faux fur is quite simply fake fur, 100% natural acrylic fibbers. It’s so similar to real fur that it can be hard to tell the difference. Acrylic can be dyed to represent the colours and patterns of real animals. Certainly it can’t give the same amount of warmth to a garment, but most of the people don’t wear fur for warmth only for beauty. Faux fur also won’t leave a huge dent in anybody wallet like real fur does.
From the moment that faux fur is so similar to real fur why Fashion Industry continues to use real fur? Is it right to prefer hurting animals when we can use natural materials to create a fur? Every year the money incomes in fashion increasing but they prefer to say yes in the existing of fur farms, hunters and the brutal murder of all those animals. On average, to make 40 inch fur coat it takes either 200 chinchillas or 60 mink or 8 seals or 20 foxes or 35 rabbits. So much blood and cruelty for a coat that we don’t truly need. Why they don’t all accept the easy way and use the alternative? Is fashion unmoral or a reflection of the human spirit violence?
Many people dupe PETA’s statement ‘I’d rather go naked than wear a fur’ saying that it’s redundant and they ‘do rather see celebrity hotties naked than wearing fur’. Also they accuse this campaign that is only reinforce rape culture. If this criticism is right why only one statement raise so many questions for fashion industry, morality and animal right? The truth is that the faces on the photography don’t actually show anything raunchy instead they are naked for a purpose. They want to make people feel comfortable in their own skin.
Morality is the main value that make us humans. Because we can’t understand animals language doesn’t mean that we can make them suffer, skin them and wear them. They can’t defend their selves so we must stand up for them, support their rights and stop all these unreasonable cruelty. Like Arthur Schopenhauer the author of ‘The Basis of Morality’ said:
“The assumption that animals are without rights and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.”
Do you know that..?
Arctic Fox, Badger, Beaver, Black Bear, Bobcat,
Chinchilla, Coyote, Coypu (Nutria), Gray Fox, Red Fox, Kit & Swift Fox,
Silver Fox, Lynx, Fisher (Marten), Marmot, Mink, Muskrat, Otter, Ocelot,
Opossum, Polecat, Rabbit, Raccoon, Raccoon Dog, Ring tail cat, Sable
(Kolinsky), Striped Skunk, Spotted Skunk, Long-tailed Weasel, Short-tailed
Weasel (Ermine), Squirrel, Wolf, Timber Wolf, Wolverine
Mink, Fox, Raccoon dog, Polecat, Coypu, Chichilla
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