BBC News - Fashion world in a spin over ethics of swamp rat fur

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2 December 2010 Last updated at 06:20 ET Help

Can wearing fur ever be guilt free?

Young American fashion designers say you need not feel bad about wearing the fur of the Louisiana swamp rat, because it is being killed off anyway for nibbling away at the coastal wetlands.

The BBC's Laura Trevelyan reports from New York.

via bbc.co.uk

No need to convince anyone of anything. Marketers know that if a person wants to wear nutria (or buy or use anything else), in a politically-correct world all they need is *an* argument, preferably a moral argument, since while people can be as thoroughly convinced that their own moral code is correct no one can prove that absolutely, so it can be bandied about until whatever the subject is is no longer popular enough to warrant arguing over, at which point people will simply move on the to next big debate, or until the argument's shifted into a new gear, which will take place faithfully whenever the old debate begins to be seen as blasé if the trend outlives interest in the subject. People who want to wear this fur will wear it and give the 'swamp rat' argument. People who feel it's wrong will continue to bring awareness through activism against it (much like the guy who made Google decide to create an algorithm designed to bury search results for marketers who use adverse attention to boost their ratings). It's funny that we think advertising has any power beyond that of bringing to our awareness all the things we 'need' or want of which we'd have otherwise gone through life blissfully unaware. The choice to buy or not to buy is ours (whether a product, service, or information, whether we pay in money, time, or the investment of energy involved in even thinking about a thing).

Posted via email from Peace Jaway