Skin

Dear Deer,

There is something about your skin. When I was in grade school we went on a school trip to a Native American / Colonial New England craft fair. At one table, I fell in love with a tiny, pale, soft leather bag. I had enough money to buy it and was going to, when the man who made it told me how he got it so soft. It was made from the skin of one of your children — a fawn — and it was specially cured by being rubbed with the fawn's brain matter. I was horrified. I couldn't touch it after that.

On the same table was a pile of tiny pelt-shaped "rugs" cut from the woolly skin of a sheep. I bought one. I thought it was cute, and I loved that it looked like it had come from a tiny little sheep. The man didn't tell me how he cured it, and though it wasn't a conscious decision, I didn't want to know so I didn't ask. I suppose that I thought it couldn't be as bad as what he'd done to the little fawn. When my brother and my friend and I made little shadowbox homes in our bookshelves for our action figures to live in, I rolled out the tiny skin on the floor like a tiny bearskin rug. The little house looked rich and cozy to me with that skin there on the floor, warm and woolly and soft.

Today I can't touch leather without feeling dirty. I do a lot of vegan shoe searching, and am constantly peering at shoes trying to find out what they're made of. Besides labeling, you can tell if something is leather or synthetic in some very concrete ways:

• Look at the cut edge of the material. Leather and suede are dark and rough inside, but synthetics look lighter, and have a foam-like appearance in their cross-section. Faux suede is usually very smooth, and if you scratch it with your nail, it's not affected. Suede is easily scratched: tiny soft fibres will stand up from its surface.
  
• Both leather and faux leather have pores or follicles scattered on their surface, but faux leather's pores are a tiny repeating pattern, while leather's pores are more random and irregularly shaped.
  
• Leather has a peculiar smell to it. Faux leather does not.

When I'm in a shoe store then, I probably look rather odd, peering closely at the shoes, scratching at them, sniffing them. When I discover that what I'm holding came from someone's body, I put it down, and I wipe my hands on my jeans. The evidence of their origin has become horrifying. Those little fibres that come up when you scratch suede are tiny particles of corpse. Follicles show where fur or hair used to be before it was scalded and scraped away. The smell is formaldehyde and other chemicals needed to keep the skin from rotting.

I didn't notice these things before, when I was a child. I was so naive that my love for little things made of leather and fur was part of my love for living animals. I loved and cared for rats, rabbits, mice and other small animals. Their fur was their own, and I would never have hurt them. When they died I was heartbroken, and I buried their bodies with love and respect. In the woods and in the garden I carefully avoided stepping on small animals and insects. On sidewalks, I would move them to the grass so they wouldn't be hurt by other people walking. I loved my stuffed animals, carved animals and other animal toys. Fur and leather were part of animals and so they were part of what I loved.

Fur and leather were luxuries. Their smell and their feel was richness and comfort. Now I see that I liked them not because I didn't realize they came from animals, only liking their softness and warmth, but because they reminded me of animals — because they were, in a way, an animal tamed. That tiny sheepskin was funny and cute to me because it looked like it had come from a tiny sheep; a sheep that was mine, ownable, not alive and not needing any care, not eating my houseplants and shitting on my floor. Our furs and our leather are cleaner, quieter, more controllable objectifications of animals, which just happen to be taken from animals themselves. When we wear them, we're disguising ourselves, putting on the animal qualities that we like and trying to make them our own.

What does it mean when someone loves someone else, and to show it gives her the soft skin of someone who was murdered by genital electrocution to avoid damaging her fur? What does it mean when someone wears beautiful shoes to show off her legs, shoes made from the skin of someone who was never allowed to run or walk or fall in love or feel the sun on her face? What does it mean when someone binds someone else that they love, with consent, with bonds made from the skin of someone who was mutilated and murdered without any regard for his consent or even his basic well-being?

The mind boggles. I don't understand how we can do these things and not see our hypocrisy, our perversion and our cruelty. I want to gather up all the furs and all the furs in the world, and bury them under the ground. I want to wash my hands of the smell and the feel of it, the crime we've perpetrated on you.

A