Displayed Taxidermy

There are some things you think but just don't dare say out loud for fear that it will one day come back to bite you in the butt. You know, the "I would NEVER..." statements. I am an opinionated person with a tendency to say what I think right when I think it. Knowing this, I try to avoid the "I would NEVER..." sentence structure altogether.

I saw an ad on television the other day offering cash for outdated fur coats or some such nonsense. Several young women were parading around outside in obnoxious (er, I mean, "luxurious") full-length fur coats with a TV-announcer-man voice over appealing to those of us who keep outdated fur coats hanging around begging to be traded in for more modern fur coats to trade said coats in now. Now, I have several problems with this. First of all, does anyone know a young suburban-mom-type woman who wears a fur coat? Where are these women!? And for the love of Pete why, WHY, would they own a fur coat, let alone wear one? What on earth do you wear a fur coat to in 2004 anyway? Maybe I'm just not in the right echelon of society to get it. Secondly, how does a fur coat become outdated? Isn't it just "fur coat style" in the first place? How many ways are there to fashion dead animal skins around oneself anyway? All fur coats just look like long straight pieces of dead animal skin hanging from an otherwise reasonable-looking woman, sometimes with small dead creatures "stylishly" affixed to the lapel. I nearly fainted one day as I thumbed through my baby's clothes and saw a bug-like figure on a shirt (turned out to be a 3/4 inch beetle); if my coat ever had a dead animal hanging from it, I'd be so freaked out by it while rummaging through my closet some day that my husband would seriously have to have me committed! What is the appeal, people!? I have never fully understood the appeal of any kind of displayed taxidermy, but I have always assumed that is because I am female, and females just don't have the need to display to our manly friends just how many "points" were on our latest "kill" or whatever. Obviously these fur-bearing women didn't hunt down these coat critters, but wearing them still seems like a prudish taxidermy display to me. I digress...

By the time that fifteen seconds were over, I felt confident that I could say aloud to anyone "I would NEVER buy a fur coat." EVER. (And I'm not even vegetarian.)