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Video: PETA Protesters Pretend To Be Dancing Cats During Fashion Week Demonstration
By
Helen Holmes
Published Feb 11, 2014
Modified Feb 12, 2014
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Helen Holmes/Gothamist
By
Helen Holmes
Published Feb 11, 2014
Modified Feb 12, 2014
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It's not Fashion Week without a fresh new look for a PETA protest, and today the organization delivered with a strange interpretive dance outside of Lincoln Center. The protest involved dancers in cat masks interacting with a woman draped in a mink coat. Here's video of their strange, barely acknowledged effort to bring awareness to fur use in high-end fashion:
As the occasional well-heeled fashonista sauntered past, the performers swirled around their animal-skin clad "victim" (who was in on it), pawing and hissing and eventually lifting her into the sky to the tune of tinny techno music emanating from a boom box. The giggles of a few smartphone-wielding spectators accompanied this. "That's a dead fox you've got on your back, ma'am," one protester called out to a passerby after the dance demonstration. What ever happened to good ol' fashioned red paint?
"This is another way to get people to think about the cruelty of the fur industry by making them think, 'how would I feel if I was killed for my coat?' " said PETA campaign specialist Ashley Byrne. "I think when someone pictures the terrifying experience of being attacked and beaten, all because someone wants the coat off your back, they begin to understand what the animals who are killed for fur are going through."
Fernando Sevilla, accompanied by his wife and visiting from Mexico, paused to watch the show. "It's spectacular…I don't know if it will be that effective at all, though," he said. "Not many people saw it, I'm not sure many people will know about it, but maybe they had fun." Not as much fun as a penguin party protest, but it is what it is... and it is kind of derivative of the Sprockets Dance:
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