The Libidinal Politics of Fur

Abstract

During the 1980s the fur-trapping and fur fashion industries came under increasing criticism from animal-rights and welfare organizations for the cruel procedures used to obtain furs. This debate entered the public domain through various media and marketing strategies. Consider, for example, the spray-painted 'X' on the back of a luxurious fur coat in a scene in Stephen Frears's film Sammy and Rosie Get Laid (1987). Notice the anti-fur media campaign and alternative marketing options launched in England in 1984 by Lynx, which made use of television commercials and billboard signs to depict not only the cruelty of the fur fashion industry but, by virtue of her complicity in purchasing the fur coat, of the female bourgeois consumer. Ponder a newspaper article in the Globe and Mail on the cosmetic industry and its ecological correctness which ran with the following headline, 'For today's fashion, we'd rather dance with wolves than skin them.' Or observe Dennis Patterson, former leader of the government of the Northwest Territories, wearing his sealskin vest to promote its continued commercial value in Dene and Inuit economies. It is not hard to see that a struggle over the meaning and value of fur is taking place all around us.