Claiming victory, PETA ends 30-year campaign against fur

The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is to stop its iconic anti-fur campaign featuring naked celebrities. Why? Because they feel they have achieved their mission.

Claiming victory against the use of fur

Thirty years after debuting its “I’d Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur” initiative, the animal rights group is putting the ad campaign to rest. “Nearly every top designer has shed fur, California has banned it, Queen Elizabeth II has renounced it, Macy’s is closing its fur salons, and now, the largest fur auction house in North America has filed for bankruptcy,” PETA senior vice president and ad creator Dan Mathews said in a statement on the organization’s web page. “With fur in a downward spiral, PETA will expand our efforts to expose the violent leather and wool trades.”

The announcement comes at the outset of New York Fashion Week. PETA originally launched the campaign with pop group The Go-Go’s posing naked behind a red and gold banner reading “We’d Rather Go-Go Naked Than Wear Fur!” in 1990. Since the ’90s, the unveiling of a new “I’d Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur” Times Square billboard during New York Fashion Week has become a hallmark of the event.

In the decades that followed, models Christy Turlington, Tyra Banks and Pamela Anderson participated in ads. Showbiz personalities Taraji P. Henson, Wendy Williams, Gillian Anderson and Kim Basinger also got in on the act.

“Since PETA first started having celebrities take it all off for animals 30 years ago, we’ve shot dozens of ads, held hundreds of protests, and crashed more than a few runways, all in the name of our “I’d Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur” campaign,” the company said in a statement. “And now, with the use of animal fur all but over, it’s time for this iconic campaign to go the way of the mink stole, so that PETA can focus on other areas in which animals still need a great deal of help, including in the leather, wool, and exotic skins trades.”

PETA will continue working to end the use of fur everywhere it still exists, including our ongoing protests against Canada Goose—which trims its parkas with the fur of wild coyotes who are caught in painful steel traps—and the few remaining designers still clinging to animal pelts.

For more information go to peta.org.

Image courtesy PETA