Childhood fantasies die hard. I grew up in the 50's, at a time when a girl’s first bra was a big thing. They actually called them training bras, as though our little bosoms needed to ease gradually into a lifetime of restraint and discomfort. (They may have been right.) The day I got mine, I locked myself in my bedroom and tried on all my clothes in the mirror to see if I looked any different. I had arrived.
Little girls also practiced writing their "married names" in their notebooks. If you had a crush on Jimmy Donovan, for example, you wrote "Mrs. Jimmy Donovan" inside all your notebooks. When you got tired of that, you wrote: Mr. & Mrs. Donovan, Joan & Jimmy Donovan, The Donovan’s, The Donovan Family - until your hand fell off.
And in my fantasies, the shapely Mrs. Jimmy Donovan was always wearing a fur coat. You couldn’t swing a dead fox in 1950's Hollywood without hitting a fur-clad star. Marilyn, Doris, Liz - they were always dragging a fur behind them. Every little girl dreamed of owning a fur coat someday.
Fast forward to the early 80's. My husband (not Jimmy Donovan) got a large and unexpected bonus, and asked if there was anything I had always wanted. By the end of the week, I had a beaver coat. I knew if I didn’t act fast, the furnace would break down, or we might come to our senses and change our minds.
I think I got to wear my coat a half-dozen times before - and it seemed like overnight to me - the animal rights protesters came out of the woodwork with spray paint. It’s not like there wasn’t an animal rights movement before I got the coat. But I honestly thought the protesters were some lunatic fringe group engaged in isolated incidents. I couldn’t believe that this prize which I had coveted since childhood, which had once symbolized glamor and sophistication, had become vulgar and disgusting.
It was with great frustration that I decided that if so many people were offended about the semi-aquatic rodents who died for my coat, then I would not wear it. Cruella De Ville was not the look I’d been going for. I stuffed it into a vacuum sealed bag and stored it on a shelf in my closet.
Like everyone else, I go through life trying to figure out what is right and wrong, and then drawing lines between what I will and will not do for the things I believe in. I will do this but not that. I will go this far - no further. The older I get, I become increasingly confused about what matters. I’m constantly rethinking everything, including my childhood fantasies.
In the 60's, it seemed I had hardly had time to enjoy wearing a bra before young women started burning their bras. I shoved all my bras to the back of the drawer and did not wear them. I felt that was a sufficient statement, and passed on the bonfire.
But by the time I got married in the 70's,"Mrs." was out, and "Ms." was in. You were supposed to keep your maiden name. Or, you could hyphenate the maiden and married name . I went with Ms. - not Mrs. I took both names - no hyphen. I am Ms. Joan Mayfield Call. I put a lot of thought into it.
And I truly like animals. I don’t kill them for sport. I want them slaughtered humanely. I never want them to suffer unnecessarily. I love my dog, and my cat. I think birds are hilarious. Emergency Vets is one of my favorite shows. But I eat animals, and I wear them. That is where I draw that line.
The anti-fur demonstrators would have a lot more credibility with me if they were equally strident with all people who eat and wear animals in any form. And I think their intense focus on fur coats (as opposed to, say, the meat counter at Walmart) is hypocritical. I can only assume that the focus on fur is connected to the price tag. I think it’s envy, which is often masked as righteousness.
Long before many of the protesters were born, there were those who believed that only the wealthy (i.e. selfish, corrupt and immoral) wore furs, and respectable women did not. Take Tricky Dick, for example. In his infamous "Checkers Speech," while defending himself against charges that he had kept a secret slush fund for campaign expenses, Nixon said that his wife Pat didn’t even own a fur coat, but only a "respectable Republican cloth coat." Perhaps that was the moment in time when the "green monster" was released.
All I know is, I’m trying to do the right thing here, and I’d just like to understand why. I’m appealing to my readers - all three of you - to tell me, if you know: Why is it so much worse to wear a fur coat than to eat a hamburger?
Also, what should I do with my coat? :
Destroy it?
Wear it?
Sell it on ebay?
What?
My operators are standing by.
joan@joancall.com
1 comment:
The treatment of the animals bothers many people. It takes a lot of minks to make one coat and mink pie is not served afterwards.
Check my recent publication record, and you will find a paper on disease susceptibility in mice, a second is in press, and with any luck, a third will come later this year. Good for me. Justifing these as elegant experiments, the best current approach, or as important infectious disease research is easy. This is not putting mascara on shaved monkeys.
Would I have done the same experiments on puppies? No! One of my collogues studies disease in pregnant guinna pigs. Most researchers must apply a liberal dose of hyperbole when discussing their research -- for example, my work will cure both jock itch and cancer by 2010 -- but her results are among the most medically relevant I have seen from basic research. The experiments are distressing for her, as they would be for me, and I admire her fortitude.
The days I worked with mice were not good days. I never felt better about it, never got over it, and am relieved to shift to a new project. I continue to defend the use of animals in disease research. And I will continue to feel rotten in the same way I feel about tormenting some of my classmates in middle school. These events clear the mirror just long enough to see who is behind them, before the glass clouds again. We rationalize our actions to avoid taking responsibility for them.
For my Valentines day, I dropped still crawling crabs into boiling water. Very romantic. I take full responsibility for each buttery bite (and the crab salad sandwiches the next day). Do I now need clown shoes to contain my carbon footprint? I doubt it, but explaining why would be rationalizing. Instead, I suggest taking the same responsibility for our decisions as consumers that we do for other choices. We decide who succeeds when we choose what to fund.
I think someone should wear your fur coat. Sell it or give it away if you are not comfortable being that person.
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