I’m the kind of girl made for fur. I’m on the petite side of things, small boned, small hipped, with a modicum of upper body strength and strong, sturdy long legs and calves.
I can walk for miles, climb trails, I am healthy and fit and energetic, but my elbows and wrists and knees and ankles and hips and even my spine – the whole skeletal structure on which the rest of me is hung – is awfully close to the surface. I don’t have much padding. I get cold easily. I’ve scanned catalogues of motorcycle and snowmobile gear, not that I ride either, but I have a sense that it won’t be too many years from now when I’ll be wearing electrically-heated clothes. For now, it’s layers and layers and faux fur and my electric blanket, which is on my bed when the weather dips into the 60s. If I had a fur blanket, I could save electricity.
It doesn’t have to be new fur. Given how hostile the world is now to fur, there’s a glut of coats, wraps, and stoles that women won’t wear because of principles. I have a couple of my Mother’s fur coats in my garage, at one point had my Grandmother’s mink stole – these women had lovely taste in fur, and at least had the good fortune to live in Wisconsin, where you can make quite a case for the need to stay warm. My grandmother died before she might have wrapped her largess in Gore-tex and prima-loft and moisture-wicking base layers – futuristic concepts and materials for a woman born in 1912, who before she had the stole, used only wool and her own body fat to stay warm throughout five decades of Wisconsin and Boston winters. I don’t know if she and my Grandfather could have always afforded mink, or if before that stole she had something with a lesser chinchilla or rabbit. For warmth’s sake, it wouldn’t have mattered. A fur collar, as big as a shawl, would have helped keep her warm the way wool just couldn’t. An insulated pelt around her neck would have been humane, really, at least for one of the animals in the equation.
I’m taller than my grandmother, but otherwise smaller. Small enough to need the wrap of a soft warm pelt, tactile enough to sink into the plush skin and pet the fir, absent-mindedly, feeling the comfort of petting my first beloved dog, the nestle even of my childhood gerbil’s fur against my face. My shoulders rise and fall in the sigh of fur. It is bliss.
Once I dated a British guy who was taller, skinnier and bonier than me. I loved his accent, his fingers, his tongue, his mind, his sense of humor, but there was no sinking in to him. Embraces were as comfortable as hugging a bag of baseball bats. He was the first person I’d been with where I’d pop out of bed immediately rather than linger, plopping down on his sofa with a couple throw pillows providing the post-coital snuggle women love and many man can do without. Then I’d crawl back under the covers, slide between his angular and pointy elbows, rest my head on his chest, individual ribs identifiable against my cheek or ear, and perch there, never softening, like an ancient Chinese woman resting her head on a stone pillow, believing something soft under her head would suck the energy from her body as she slept. I reentered the bed not for physical comfort, but the soothing aura of accented murmurs and sweet talk, the lilt of his jokes, boundless energy and enthusiasm coated in British dialect. It was months into the relationship when I learned his accent disappeared when he was angry, and he could yell at me just like any other American man. Without the accent, I was left snuggling up to Henry Harlow’s wire monkey, and that was enough to put an expiration date on the two of us.
I need another’s skin, the largess of biceps and chest, the soft hair of a firm arm around me. I need to sink into something, someone. And when sinking in to another person isn’t practical, like out in the world doing something like my day job, I’ve found some great replacements – faux fur vests and coats. It used to be that faux fur was more faux than fur, and I could tell I was in a replacement substance, much like there’s no way to forget that there’s no cheese in vegan cheese. Something essential was missing – faux fur was pretty, and soft, yes, but felt more acrylic, more artificial. I never found myself petting it, absentmindedly, never picked stray hairs off my skin after if shed, never spent any time wondering about the animal who gave up its own protective outerwear to keep me warm. Guilt seems to add a few degrees of warmth to a garment – maybe in 2016, when the worst forms of child labor are to be phased out, when H&M no longer uses Uzbek cotton and shirts from the Gap are embroidered solely by well-paid adult hands that belong to workers who earn a living wage, and Benetton clothes are assembled in well-ventilated buildings with workers who work 8 hours a day, minus lunch and two 15 minute-breaks, we’ll find that clothes just don’t keep us quite as warm as they used to, when they carried the blood and sweat of another’s pain in every stitch.
The other day I was shopping for rain gear for my son, who still needs annual next-size-up versions of waterproof, wicking, fast-drying synthetic clothes that keep him warm (but not too warm) and dry enough to make it through 6 months of our rainy season. I’ve stopped growing, so I no longer need new gear each year, but that doesn’t stop me from looking. I found an off-white soft-as-a-children’s-plush-toy jacket, warm and furry with a zipper on the bias. I tried it on and couldn’t take it off; it was love at first sinking embrace. That coat holds me, makes me feel like I’m not alone, even though, obviously, I’m still a singular human wearing a singular article of clothing.
I wonder if that’s what my Grandma felt when wrapped in her mink stole, or my Mom, in her rabbit coat with leather trim. That for just a brief moment, they were contained, protected, warmed not just by the fur but by the love of the men who worked hard enough to be able to purchase the furs. The furs provide skin and bodily warmth, yes, but maybe also a warming of the soul. Women didn’t buy stoles or wraps or full length fur coats on their own – they received them as gifts. Maybe that’s also part of the hostile stance against fur – that it’s inhumane and sexist. If any woman ventures out and kills a fox, skins it herself, and sews a perfect clasp between its claws, perhaps she’s entitled to wear it, the way hunters are entitled to venison stew and the rest of us buy-it-prepackaged-at-the-store folks in our too-sanitized lives that are too-distant from the kill, our hands bloodless as we reach for the filet or the mink wrap, it’s this that drives PETA crazy. Not that we all crave the comforts of protective pelts and substantial meats, but that we do so without getting our individual hands dirty. Without the pain.
Well, as one who rolled around with a skinny, bony Brit under a threadbare comforter, I’m no stranger to pain. As one who has rested my dainty little girl head on a pillow of stone, I’ve paid my dues. I can’t bring myself to wear the furs I’ve inherited, not in this town, not in this day and age. But for the next six months you’ll find me wearing soft, plush, faux fur, occasionally sneaking up to my garage for an illicit embrace of my Mom’s rabbit coat and my Grandma’s mink stole, dancing slowly in the dry, winter moonlight, just me, but more than me, my face buried in the things that come to us from somewhere else, no matter how much pain it took to get here.