May Your Valentine’s Day Be Bald

By Andrew Peerless in News on Feb 11, 2005 2:30PM

Chicagoist knows you’ve been thinking long and hard about what to get your special sweetheart for Valentine’s Day… perhaps a dozen fuzzy red roses, tipped with the fur of a white fox? Or maybe a heart-shaped box of beaver pelt-filled chocolate delights? Oh, how about a romantic candlelight dinner and a bottle of mink?

“Not on our turf!” say the Humane Society and In Defense of Animals, who are joining cuddly forces to blanket the CTA’s Red Line with anti-fur messages in the next few weeks. The ads will purportedly remind passengers that “Beavers and foxes have as much right to live as cats and dogs,” and will sport a made-in-elementary-school appearance (as if to say, “Even kids are smart enough to not kill and wear lovely animal furs!”).

Fur-sporting art-lovers may feel a bit conflicted about the campaign, whose advertisements were created by legendary Pop Artist Peter Max. If Max’s well-known oeuvre is any indication of how the ads will appear, the campaign should – at the very least – make the el really pretty and colorful for fur-lovers and fur-haters alike.