Columnist Susan Snyder: To PETA, Beyonce not to die fur

Tuesday, Aug. 30, 2005 | 8:08 a.m.

PETA, which I am beginning to think is based in Las Vegas, isn't crazy in love with singer Beyonce's affinity for fur.

Members of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals will be outside the Las Vegas Convention Center today protesting singer Beyonce Knowles' new line of clothing that features fur.

The pop celebrity will be inside the air-conditioned center promoting her House of Dereon fashions, a line named for her seamstress grandmother that reportedly includes denim-and-fur combinations.

PETA members have spent a good part of the past year chasing the most famous member of Destiny's Child around the globe, taunting the naughty girl for wearing fur.

They protested outside Madison Square Garden in 2004. They took out a full-page ad in Billboard magazine showing a pet caught in a fur trap intended for a wild animal. They protested her December purchase of $492 fur-topped Canadian mukluks.

I'd have toted a sign for that last one. No one should spend $492 on ugly shoes.

For the gruesome details and photos of the fur industry, PETA suggests logging on to www.furisdead.com. I skipped the "fur farm horror" section, as there are certain kinds of photos I don't need in my life, and PETA produces about 80 percent of them.

Suffice to say, warm fuzzies are not abundant in fur harvesting.

I don't recall when fur became another thing to protest. But I do recall the two fur items my mother owned.

One was a mink jacket, which she bought for herself on my dad's birthday. She gave him the bill in his card. He owed her the jacket, she said, to make up for the artificial (fake) one he'd purchased for her as a Christmas gift one year.

She called it, "The schmink."

It was a striped, gray-and-white stole that, to this day, Mom isn't sure what kind of animal it was to represent.

"It was the ugliest thing I'd ever seen," she said. "I wouldn't have worn it to bed."

The other fur item was a gray wool suit with a tiny chinchilla collar. It now hangs at the back of my closet.

I suppose I could take the coat out to the Las Vegas Convention Center and burn it in effigy or something. But I figure the animals that died for it did so 40 years ago.

Is there a statute of limitations? Do we yank it out of museums or second-hand shops, or is the line drawn at new stuff?

I showed up for work at Spring Mountain Ranch State Park a couple of years ago, and another volunteer talked of how a young visitor earlier that week had scrawled anti-fur messages on the glass case containing the beaver-fur clothing a former ranch owner and furrier made for his mother in the early 1900s.

We do have better fabrics and options available now -- even the "schmink" looks better. And it wouldn't hurt Beyonce's image among the younger set to work it out with the animal rights people who are trying to stop animals from being skinned alive.

Besides, I'm thinking fur isn't going to top the fashion list for anyone in Las Vegas during an August heat wave. Even our pets don't want to wear it. Shouldn't be too much of a reach to reach for something else.