Alicia Silverstone Takes It All Off To Protest Leather; Fans Make Jokes, Have Questions

alicia silverstone at fashion show

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You may remember Alicia Silverstone from such films as The Crush, Clueless, Batman & Robin and, I don’t know… Tropic Thunder?

The 46 year-old actress, despite appearing in 31 films with an average U.S. box office take of around just $18 million each, is what some people like to call a “Hollywood icon.” I guess she was good on The Baby-Sitters Club?

And by some people, we, of course, mean PETA.

“Don’t be a prick, wear vegan!” PETA tweeted out on Tuesday. “#Hollywood icon @AliciaSilv is stripping away the leather industry’s greenwashing & urging folks to choose sustainable & ethical leather made from plants.”

The tweet included a video of their latest “Don’t Be A Prick” campaign featuring Silverstone stripping down to her altogether, using nothing but her hands to cover up her bits.

“Her message is on point,” PETA wrote in another tweet. “The sensational @AliciaSilv is baring it all to get the facts out: leather made from cows kills animals AND the planet.”

“If she has to get naked for you to care about animals, then that’s what she’ll do!” PETA added in a press release. “Longtime animal advocate Alicia Silverstone joins PETA once again to bear it all and remind folks not to be a prick and to wear vegan!”

Cows are intelligent, sensitive animals who feel joy and fear, just as dogs and cats do. They develop complex relationships and get excited when they achieve a goal. They also mourn the deaths of their friends and prefer to sleep close to family members.

Not only is leather production cruel to animals, it also destroys to the environment. Raising animals just to kill them for their body parts requires huge amounts of food, pastureland, water, and fossil fuels. Animals on today’s farms worldwide produce 130 times as much excrement as the entire human population, without the benefit of waste treatment plants.

They suggest that instead of wearing leather made from cows as we have done for centuries, everyone should switch to sustainable vegan leather materials like mushroom, apple, and cactus leather.

Because most of you (like me) have no idea what those are, here you go…

Mushroom leather is made from mycelium, the vegetative part of a fungus. Apple leather is made using the leftover pomace and peel from the fruit juice and compote industry. While cactus leather is made from the leaves of the Nopal cactus plant.

Naturally, because this is such an important subject to both PETA and Hollywood icon Alicia Silverstone, many on the internet reacted with, you guessed it, jokes.

“Power to the plant! How could they let animal race be free, and not for plant,” someone asked on Instagram.

Okay, okay… not all of the comments were jokes. Some were actual reasonable statements and questions.

“By wearing plastic? Isn’t plastic whats killing the planet? Does it not affect fertility and become endocrine disruptors?” someone else wrote on Instagram. “What about the microplastics in placentas and the water? Cows are part of actual nature and have provided for human needs for milenia [sic], milk, food, clothing. Whats has been lost is our reverence for what they provided.”

Actually, there was a study that did find one company’s cactus leather is 65% plastic polyurethane. The researchers called it “Sustainability Marketing Trickery.”

The company whose cactus leather was tested claimed that it was “partly” biodegradable. There is no such thing. It either is or it isn’t.

Not all cow leather alternatives are good. Not all of them are bad either.

Rather than dragging a celebrity out of mothballs and taking all of her clothes away for a photo shoot, perhaps next time PETA can provide people with some actual resources so they know which is which.

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Before settling down at BroBible, Douglas Charles, a graduate of the University of Iowa (Go Hawks), owned and operated a wide assortment of websites. He is also one of the few White Sox fans out there and thinks Michael Jordan is, hands down, the GOAT.