A Beastly Idea for Beauty!

Have you heard of mink eyelash extensions? Neither had I until recently. But apparently they're all the rage - or at least that's what the people selling them say. Personally they just make me enraged!

Ok, so you're not likely to catch me with eyelash extensions anyway - mostly, cause I don't think I could pull this look off (and yes that is Johnny Depp). But seriously, there's absolutely nothing attractive about glueing animal fur to your face. Don't get me wrong, I think mink fur is nice - when it's on a mink.

I've noticed that many of the companies selling these extensions boast that they don't kill the minks. According to one site they "harvest" the lashes "by gently brushing live animals." That all sounds well and good, until you realise that must mean that these animals are forced to spend their entire lives on fur farms.

You only have to take a glimpse inside a mink farm to know that it's cruel. Minks are solitary animals who roam over a habitat of several kilometres. Yet in fur farms they are locked in a cage the size of an open newspaper, surrounded by other minks. This is an incredibly stressful environment for them and can even lead to cannibalism and self mutilation. I stumbled across this film about fur farms in Sweden recently (Warning: this is not for the faint hearted!).

Wanting to look beautiful is one thing. But condemning an animal to a life of misery to have longer lashes is an ugly thing for anyone to do. Having said that, sadly the truth is that most people splurging on mink eyelash extensions probably don't even realise what goes into making them. If they did, I'm sure they'd buy synthetic lash extensions instead!

That's my rant off my chest. What silly fashion trends bug you?

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