Two years ago I bought a fur coat. I got it at the Goodwill on Coburg Road and it cost $30. I had absolutely no reason to get it. This isn’t normally a hindrance in my purchasing, but with the fur coat it was different. I didn’t even know why I wanted it. But I did. I wanted it so bad. I bought it and wrapped it up in a plastic bag to protect it from the rain and took it home. The impracticality of the coat was immediately made obvious when I had to protect it from the elements.
But I loved it all the same. Maybe even a little more, knowing that the coat needed me like I needed it. We, the Goodwill sales girl and me, decided it was rabbit. It is brown and black and red and blonde all stitched together. I thought about taking the coat to a salon, draping it dramatically over the swivel chair and stating, “Make my hair look like that.”
I would put the coat on all the time. Sometimes I would just look in the mirror admiring how beautiful it was. When I got cold I would don my fur rather than turn up the thermostat. In the book “Sex and the City,” Carrie first moves to New York with nothing but a fur coat which she sleeps under. I knew that I could move anywhere with just the coat and survive. The coat was warm and beautiful and a little crazy, and I loved how it made me feel the same way. The only thing I could never do with the coat was go out in public with it.
This is Eugene. It rains all the time, sure, but my biggest fear was that the coat would suffer at the hands of the citizens. I was so scared the coat would get spray painted. Then I realized that was kind of a stupid fear. But what if someone splashed nasty gutter rain water all over me and the coat? That was more plausible. Or what if some animal rights activist berated me for supporting an industry that raises and slaughters animals for fashion? It was too scary.
I took the coat home with me to Phoenix for the summer. I knew I could never wear it there because it would never get cold enough, but I wanted to have it when I moved to Washington, DC. So I schlepped the coat across the country, carefully wrapped and stuffed into my already overpacked suitcase. I had wonderful dreams of wearing the coat to some old-money political ball or something. The coat would be accepted there. It would be around other fur coats. But alas, I was never invited to any soirees. The coat hung in the closet of my dorm room at American University for three months. I did sleep under it once, when my fleece blanket couldn’t keep me warm, but that was it. I was also a little scared the coat might get damaged at a bar. And the possibility of running into a spray paint wielding PETA operative was much stronger in a big East Coast city.
But the coat stuck with me. I knew I would have to wear it one day. The coat was patient, and this week, its time finally came. I was invited to a party where a mask and semi-formal attire was required. So I wore a little black dress, a mask adorned with caramel, black beads and feathers – and the fur coat. My hair was straightened, and I looked so different that if I got any guff about the coat, I figured I could just say I was someone else.
As it turned out, all my fears about anti-fur Eugene were completely unfounded. I got nothing but compliments from beautiful people dressed to the nines. The coat was described as “gorgeous” and “beautiful” and “awesome” and all the things I had thought about it for years. Not one person called me a murderer or fashion slave. Everyone seemed to appreciate the coat for what it was: a unique, luxurious and wonderful garment.
One girl confessed that she too had hid her fur in her closet for years, scared to wear it for the same reasons I was. She said when she finally wore it she felt liberated and independent. Most of all, she was proud of the fact that she was a self-described “dreadlocked, fur-wearing vegan.” I wondered what her fur coat might look like.
I also wondered why I had been so scared for so long. The Dali Lama says you should only seek your own happiness, and that problems start when you start worrying about the happiness of others. Once again, he is absolutely right. I realized that it didn’t matter how or whether other people would judge me for wearing it. I love the coat. It makes me happy. It is the absolute warmest jacket I own, and winter is almost here.
I have no problem with PETA and other animal rights activists who speak out against fur. They don’t believe it is right to kill an animal for fur, and that is their opinion. They even have a really cool fur donation program where they give old fur coats to homeless people. They have even given them to women and children in Afghanistan and Iraq. What a wonderful way to preserve the function of what they call an unethical practice.
Fashion is subjective. I love my gaudy rabbit’s fur coat. I think I look pretty hot in it. Never again will I be scared to wear something because of what other people may think.