A couple of months ago I inherited some items that had once belonged to my mother. Most of these boxes invoked poignant joy. But one produced a moral dilemma.
I found a collection of fur garments, wrapped in plastic, that my mother had inherited from her mother. This included a fabulous floor-length mink coat of the sort that heiresses once commonly wore around New York or Geneva, and wealthy women still sport in Moscow or Davos.
Should I wear that coat? Toss it away? Just sell it on eBay? Twenty years ago my answer would have been clear: I would have conducted a ritual burning of the mink while enveloped in a smug glow of political correctness. I started my adult life as a tie-dye-wearing anthropology student and back then the animal rights movement was running such a slick anti-fur campaign that mink seemed taboo to westerners of my age. Who can forget those ghastly posters of slaughtered seals? Or the shots of fur-clad ladies being doused in red paint in the streets by angry protesters?
In those days, sporting fur in public seemed like an act of deliberate provocation — even before you factored in the issues of privilege and wealth. Indeed, fur was so controversial that I had forgotten my mother even had a mink coat because she barely wore it.
But today, my attitudes to fur — like those of many western consumers — have become less black and white. Or sable and cream, perhaps. That is partly due to experience: having lived in Russia I now realise that fur is extraordinarily effective at combating extreme cold. But it is also because I have become increasingly aware of the capricious nature of political campaigns and concepts of political correctness, particularly in an era of social media. The more I think about it, the odder it seems that someone should throw a paintball at a fur coat but still wear leather, eat factory-farmed meat or buy most types of fast fashion, given what is happening in some workshops.
In any case, a moral analysis of fur has become more complicated. Fur has been associated with some shamefully cruel practices in the past. But it is not always associated with animal cruelty: these days designers in places such as Vermont are making fur coats out of road kill, and parts of the industry are becoming better regulated.
The social ecosystem of fur is also more complex than it might seem. When fur prices tumbled in the 1980s, due to the anti-fur campaign, the biggest victims were not the rich women whose coats were doused in red paint — but indigenous groups, in places such as Canada, who had relied on the fur trade for their living.
But the other complicating factor is technology. In the past couple of decades it has become easy to produce a fake fur coat. Sometimes these are fashioned to look as artificial as possible (apparently, a hot item this winter is a peppermint-green fake fur). But often, such items look identical to my mink. Either way, the trend has lessened the stigma around fur, making it more widely worn. Indeed, since 1995, prices have risen.
In some ways this is deeply ironic. In centuries past fur was valuable because it seemed so exclusive and natural. Now its acceptability and price are rising because of plentiful fakes. If nothing else, this should remind us all of just how malleable many of our symbols can be, and how arbitrary our concepts of “value”. We are all trapped by deeply embedded cultural rules we inherit from our surroundings, often without much thought.
I am a case in point. For many weeks that mink sat untouched in my closet in New York while I uneasily pondered what to do. Then my own daughters stumbled on the bags and it suddenly occurred to me that wearing that coat, whatever its origins, could be an ecologically positive act. Burning the coat would not bring dead animals back to life. But wearing it would at least be recycling it.
So when the temperature plunged I finally swathed myself in the sensual layers of mink. Part of me still feels a touch uneasy sporting it in the street. But I comfort myself with the fact that, as one of my daughters acerbically pointed out, nobody knows if it is real. Perhaps that would have made my grandmother spin in her grave. I prefer to chuckle at the irony — and hope that the next generation of fur coats can be produced in the most humane way possible.
几个月前，我继承了一些曾经属于我母亲的东西。大多数箱子都让我悲欣交集。然而其中一个箱子却让我陷入了道德上的两难境地。
那个箱子里有一些用塑料膜包裹的皮草外衣，是母亲从姥姥那里继承来的。其中包括一件极赞的及地貂皮大衣，就是过去纽约或者日内瓦的女继承人常穿的那种，现在在莫斯科或者达沃斯，富有的女性也依然穿着这种大衣在外招摇。
我是应该穿这件大衣？还是扔掉它？还是干脆在eBay上卖掉？如果是20年前，我的选择会很明确：我会举行一个小仪式，烧掉这件貂皮大衣，沉浸在政治正确带来的强烈自得之中。我刚跨入成年时期的时候，还是一个喜欢穿扎染衣服的人类学学生，那时动物权利运动发起的反皮草运动开展得如此成功，以至于貂皮似乎成了当时西方年轻人的禁忌。谁能忘记那些画着屠杀海豹画面的可怕海报？或者大街上穿皮草的女性被愤怒的抗议者泼红漆的照片？
在那个时代，在公开场合穿皮草这种行为本身似乎就是一种故意挑衅，更何况它还有炫耀特权和财富之嫌。的确，那时皮草极富争议，我母亲几乎没穿过，以至于我都忘记了她还有一件貂皮大衣。
但是现在，和许多西方消费者一样，我对皮草的态度变得不是那么非黑即白，或者大概说，不是那么非“紫貂”即“白貂”了。部分原因源自经验：在俄罗斯生活过以后，我现在意识到，皮草抵御极寒的效果绝佳。此外还因为，我越来越意识到政治运动和政治正确的概念是多么反复无常，尤其是在社交媒体时代。我越是思考这件事，就越觉得蹊跷：有的人怎么能一方面朝皮草大衣扔油漆弹，另一方面却依然穿着皮革制品、吃工业化养殖动物的肉，不顾一些制衣厂正在上演的非人道事件，购买各种的快时尚时装？
无论如何，对皮草进行道德分析变得更复杂了。皮草与过去的一些可耻的残忍行径被联系在了一起，但皮草并不是总是都和虐待动物有关：现在，美国佛蒙特州等地的设计师利用道路上被车轧死的动物制作皮草大衣，皮草业某些部分的监管状况也正在改善。
皮草的社会生态环境也比表面看起来更加复杂。由于反皮草运动，上世纪80年代皮草价格暴跌，但当时最大的受害者却不是那些皮草大衣被泼红漆的富家女性，而是加拿大等地那些一直靠皮草贸易维持生计的原住民。
另一个让情况复杂化的因素是技术。过去几十年，制作仿皮草大衣变得更加简单。有时，看起来尽可能有人造感还是一种时尚（显然，今年冬天的一个热门单品就是薄荷绿仿皮草）。但大多数时候，仿皮草单品看起来和我这件真貂皮并无二致。不论如何，这种潮流都部分洗刷了皮草背负的污名，让穿皮草的人越来越多。事实上，1995年后皮草的价格一直在上涨。
从某些方面来说，这真是一种莫大的讽刺。过去几百年来，皮草因其稀有和天然而贵重。如今却是因为仿皮草制品众多，皮草的接受度和价格双双上升。撇开别的不说，这起码昭示出我们的许多“符号”是多么容易改变，我们对“价值”的定义又是多么的主观。我们都受困于周遭环境潜移默化带给我们的一些根深蒂固的文化规则，这个过程中我们往往都没有细想。
我本人就是一个例子。许多星期以来，这件貂皮大衣原封不动地待在我纽约寓所的衣柜里，我忐忑不安地考虑该怎么做。然后我的女儿们偶然发现了装衣服的袋子，而我突然想到，不管这件大衣是怎么制作出来的，穿上它是一种对生态有益的行为。烧掉这件大衣无法让死去的动物们起死回生，但穿上它至少让它再次得到了利用。
因此，当气温猛降的时候，我终于把自己包裹在了舒服的貂皮里。穿着貂皮大衣在街上走，我心里还是有一丝不安。但我安慰自己，正如我一个女儿尖刻地指出的那样，根本没人知道这件貂皮大衣是不是真的。我姥姥若是听到我女儿的话，或许会气得在坟墓里翻身。但我宁愿对女儿的讽刺一笑置之，并且寄望于下一代皮草大衣能够以尽可能最人道的方式制作。