Persistence pays off: The animal fur ban 35 years in the making

There’s no such thing as an overnight success, as any celebrity or comedian will tell you. This week, L.A. City Council voted unanimously to ban the sale and manufacture of fur in city limits becoming the largest city in America — and the world — to do so. And earlier this month, Burberry finally decided to stop using fur — following in the footsteps earlier this year of fur holdouts Gucci, Galliano, Versace, and Donna Karan. 

These decisions were about 35 years in the making, and I remember how it all began.

{mosads}In the ’50s, I did what lots of little girls did back then: dressed up in my mother’s “court shoes,” with my grandmother’s fox stole around my neck. I remember the plastic Teddy bear eyes in the sockets where real ones had once looked out at the forest and the way you could swish the myriad tails around as if you were parading to your table at the Copa or some such exotic “dying to be seen” restaurant. 

In the late ’60s, I proudly bought my first coat with a handsome fur collar made up of two silver foxes and, a little later, my first full fur coat. I thought I was the cat’s pajamas in this Ginger Rogers — style square-shouldered monstrosity created from the bodies of over 100 little animals, all sewn together so cleverly.  

There were no animal rights activists then to question my choice, none to accost me.  People smiled approvingly, perhaps even enviously. 

Then, more than 30 years ago now, animal rights groups came together over reports of extreme cruelty caused by steel traps (still used today to catch the coyotes whose fur becomes jacket trim) and on fur “farms,” where wild animals, like minks and beavers, were badly treated and driven out of their minds in close confinement. The first photographs and eyewitness accounts of abominable suffering made it clear that something had to be done to awaken the public conscience.

Those were the days when fur coats were worn by wealthy board members attending humane society meetings, but a coalition of groups, including The Fund for Animals, The International Society for Animal Rights, and PETA all came together to challenge the idea that one could care about dogs but butcher foxes just to achieve a certain look. Those upsetting photographs were sent out by the thousands, together with an appeal to stop seeing fur as a status symbol and to see it instead for what it was: the product of extreme suffering and needless killing, to make wearing it déclassé.  

Next came the anti-fur protests, the first-ever outside stores selling fur. Protesters had harsh words and even objects hurled at them, and they were ridiculed in the media. But, as the saying goes, “first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” All that takes a while, whether one is talking about a woman’s right to vote, wheelchair access to public buildings, or banning raccoon dogs from being anally electrocuted to make a ski parka. 

The price of fur plummeted over the years, and the industry responded by dyeing real fur jackets to make them look fake and making fur “accessible” to the masses in the form of fur pom-poms and other accessories — in other words, trying to sell something that no one, especially young people, wanted any more.

Here we are now in 2018, seeing the effects of tenacious campaigning, from the now-iconic “I’d Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur” ads, to ethical designers providing fancier, warmer, more stylish, lighter materials that have relegated that caveperson look to the garbage heap of history. 

The lesson is one that everyone hoping for social change can hold up as a beacon to guide them through dark times. Change happens if you make it happen — if you fight for what you believe is right and don’t give up. 

Ingrid Newkirk is the president and founder of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), the world’s largest animal rights organization. Newkirk is the author of “One Can Make a Difference” and the subject of the HBO documentary “I Am an Animal: The Story of Ingrid Newkirk and PETA.”