Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Explain this to me, please.

So I'm getting ready this morning and the TeeWee in roomie's bedroom is audibly tuned to the Today show. I guess it's some fashion segment, because the woman the announcer chick was talking to said "...and faux leather is very popular this year..."

I poked my head in the room and the jacket on the screen looked like a regular leather jacket to me.

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but the reason someone would want to avoid leather was because they objected to the cruel and inhumane practice of draping themselves in the hides of slaughtered animals.

So, if that were the case, then why would they want to look just like they had engaged in the cruel and inhumane practice of draping themselves in the hides of slaughtered animals?

Given the values set implied by the choice of faux leather, wouldn't that be as tacky as, oh... say... having fake Jewish lampshades at home? And then claiming that you didn't agree with the Nazis or anything, but they were so stylish, plus they matched the sofa.

I'm thinking that these are bought by the kinds of people who don't subject their worldview to much in the way of logical scrutiny...

42 comments:

Anonymous said...

People might also prefer faux leather b/c it's cheaper than real leather, mightn't they?

Then the identicalness would be a feature, not a bug.

BobG said...

I never have seen anything even approaching logic when looking at the fashion world.
I am about the most unfashionable person I know, but I wear what I want, and if others don't like that, it's their problem.

Tam said...

wfgodbold,

Perhaps. Although these didn't strike me as jackets that would be bought for the cost savings...

Bubblehead Les. said...

So how many poor, innocent Nagas were killed to make those Faux Leather coats?

Anonymous said...

Cargo cult fashion sense, in the manner in which soyburgers, or tofurkeys, can be called a cargo cult diet.

Mike James

the gripping hand said...

"logical scrutiny." Silly Tam, such unrealistic expectations.

og said...

Weird, indeed.

Some observant Jews I know will not wear even imitation leather shoes on Yom Kippur because they feel it violates the ninth commandment against bearing false witness. Apparently the vegantarians have no such inherent moral restrictions.

Me, I like pleather pants on some women because they conform to curves in a way thats.... I'll be in my bunk.

Joseph said...

I've always thought the same sort of way about people who'd eat vegiburgers. "I want something that looks and tastes like I killed an animal, but not really!"

The same goes for tofu bacon or any other imitation meat. If I want vegetables, I'll eat them in their natural state, preferably flavored with animal fat.

FWIW I don't know what vegiburgers taste like since I like real dead animal between the buns.

Joseph said...

... and that totally didn't come out right...

Anonymous said...

They came for the Nagas and I did nothing....

Joanna said...

Okay, first of all, it's "Naugas", not "Nagas". A naga is a snake.

Second, soy "meat" is an abomination. Nobody eats that stuff by choice unless a) they can't eat the real stuff for health reasons, or b) they want to feel superior without actually giving anything up.

Anonymous said...

C'mon folks, they're called Naugas. I hadn't heard of them since the 70's, but amazingly, they still exist!!

http://www.naugahyde.com/

Stretch said...

Scene:
GMU campus
Characters:
Bright eyed PETA convert
Me, 5 minutes after a delicious BLT on wholewheat toast w/extra mayo.

BEPC: Why are you wearing a leather jacket?
Me: It's silly to throw away the outsides after you've eaten the insides.
BEPC: *urp* (rushes for trash can)

I miss college. Today I'd be either expelled or sent to a re-educa ... er ... "sensitivity" class.

Stuart the Viking said...

Yes, I have actually been attacked verbally at by a young (presumeably vegan) girl because she apparently overheard my conversation with a fellow carnivore about how yummy a steak would taste about then. We were hungry, what else would a good carnivore talk about when hungry.

I looked down. She thought I was trying to check out her chest. Nope, I was looking at her shoes. "HYPOCRITE!" She was agaust "I'm not a hypocrite!" says she. Then I pointed out that she was wearing leather shoes.

She stomped off (still wearing dead cows on her feet).

s

global village idiot said...

Fake leather exists for the same reason that fake fur exists.

They both exist for the express purpose of providing legal justification for beating green bloopy snot bubbles out of animal rights activists who dump red paint on them after mistaking them for the real thing.

gvi

WV: weeta - what the cute Eloi eat.

dave said...

Scene:
OU campus
Characters:
Sweet Young Thing
Me, eating a roast beef sandwich

SYT: "How can you eat meat?"
Me, in my best drawl: "Well, first I go out in the woods, with a rifle...."
SYT: <horrified face, followed by hasty footsteps>

Lissa said...

I've got a couple pleather jackets and one pleather trenchcoat. They're one-tenth the cost of leather, wipe clean with windex, and are waterproof. What's not to like?

Armed Texan said...

people who don't subject their worldview to much in the way of logical scrutiny...

Or scrutiny of any kind really.

staghounds said...

Just wondering, any of the readership ever been castigated for animal use by a male with no female audience present?

Weer'd Beard said...

Probably the same reason why they keep treating veggies to look and taste like yummy meats.

I've been known to enjoy some vegetarian meals, but ones that taste like yummy vegetables.

I suspect they're just self-righteous, but fundamentally unhappy people who WANT what the rest of us don't make a big deal of.

the pawnbroker said...

Buncha illiterates. Read that caption again...

It's not Nagas *or* Naugas that are being sacrificed here, but poor innocent little Fauxs!

Save the fauxs! Go nekkid!

Don M said...

Hurrah for the Naugas!

And Naugahyde does better in the rain than leather.

We used to have to put "Leather Vesicant Dressing" on our boots to get that 'faux nauga' waterproof quality.

Anonymous said...

What should be in the Devil's dictionary:

"Vegetarian": Bad Hunter.

"Faux Leather": A product of deceased microbes, made to resemble a product of diseased macrobes.

global village idiot said...

My daughter was accosted by a vegetarian classmate a year or two ago, and responded, "If God had wanted us to not eat animals, he wouldn't have made them so yummy."

My daughter seldom complains about being trifled with at school.

As to staghound's question, yes I was but he was a little sissy-girly-candypants so it doesn't really count. I've never been sermonized about eating meat by a rugby player.

gvi

Sigivald said...

I think there are some people that aren't PETA-style fanatics, who don't want to be "personally responsible" for the death of a cow.

But don't care about "messages" or the like, and like the look.

Those people would be the target market; they're not about posturing or wailing about the Inhumanity Of Man To Bovine, they just don't want an actual cow to die.

Now, whether there's enough of them for it to matter...

Anonymous said...

Someone sent me a little poster of a cow making manure.

The captions said:

Vegetarians: my food shits on your food.

Gerry

Brad K. said...

Um, more union members make vinyl out of oil than make leather out of animal skins?

Too many Obama backers own oil stocks to let the EPA regulate fake leather?

Soros hasn't paid them, yet, to protest fake leather?

Buzz said...

If it was showcased by some half-assed, limp-wristed "designer" at the Paris show and worn down the runway by an anorexic, bubble-headed, heroin-addict-looking bimbo, it wouldn't matter whether it was made from the rectal tissue of the last remaining Javan rhino or crusted shit from the cardboard floor of the local homeless man's shanty. Some would just "have to" have it to be part of the popular crowd.

Fancipher P. Cat said...

"Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but the reason someone would want to avoid leather was because they objected to the cruel and inhumane practice of draping themselves in the hides of slaughtered animals."

I disagree with you. Ethical vegans/vegetarians/whatever object to the slaughter, not the draping. It's not like an animal is going to get offended by faux leather, as a Jewish person would in your example. I don't really see the problem here. I also don't get complaints about the hypocrisy of fake meat, although it is consistently terrible so why bother.

BGMiller said...

Gotta eat the cows.
Keeps 'em in their place.
Otherwise they'd be gettin' all uppity.

Can't stand no uppity ungulates...


BGM

Anonymous said...

Faux leather - what you are NOT wearing as you exit pit lane on your motorcycle road-racer.

BoxStockRacer

Anonymous said...

@staghounds ~ Yes. Monterey, CA circa 1991. He was very large and very male and very loud and very irate. I was wearing a rabbit fur coat and responded like a rabbit.

Although, come to think of it, *I* could have been the female audience you refer to. But if so, the goal was most definitely not courtship, but dominance.

Anonymous said...

One of my favorite authors, Douglas Coupland, said it best in "microserfs": "More importantly, by eating 'burgers' aren't you just still buying into the 'meat concept.' Tofu hot dogs are merely an isotope of meat. If you yourself are a vegetarian, but still dream of burgers, then all you really are is a cryptocarnivore."

I've never understood the philosophy of standing for one thing, and then still participating in some masked version of it's opposite. It's like an anti-gun person playing Call of Duty.

Old NFO said...

Logic? Ain't happenin... And buying a NICE leather jacket is going to set you back $600, so there is probably a price point involved.

Anonymous said...

Silly Tam, logic never had anything to do with fashion!

Ulises from CA

A Critic said...

I recently bought a pair of Nytek (new type of fake leather) Matterhorn mining boots. I don't like to use leather because most cows in this country are abused in the most horrible ways.

I wouldn't torture a deer before killing it....why would I torture a cow?

On a Wing and a Whim said...

I'm betting this wasn't the target of your teewee's marketing, but pleather, like latex, hold up to a hard night's dancing and cleans up a lot faster than actual leather pants or corset - and if they're destroyed, they're cheap enough to be replaced without near as much regret as leather.

That's not to say I don't prefer real leather, well-made and nicely tailored, but if I have to chose between a leather corset and no flying, or a pleather corset and a tank or two of avgas... well, I may sigh a little, but my real priorities show when I pull out my wallet.

Tam said...

Old NFO, Wing And A Whim,

See, those are reasons I can understand...

Anonymous said...

Of course we could start the People for the Ethical treatment of Vegetables, (PETV) to prevent the rude treatment of vegetable life, or the desecration of the bodies of ocean plants that must occur to create naugahyde.

The poor plants, they die, can't we let them rest in peace? Do we have to drag them about, cook them, mutilate them to make our plastic fashions? Isn't it just like us to think life like us, animal life, should be somehow privileged over plant life? Shame on the purveyors of plastic putrefied plants!

mariner said...

Tam, you give them far too much credit -- those imbeciles are too stupid to have a "worldview".

Grayson said...

Doc Nickol, over at The Whiteboard,
said it best:

"Vegetables are what food eats."

John B said...

I loved to needle my late girlfriend on her vegetarianism, and the purchase of faux meat products.

And how many Naugas had to die for that recliner?