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Ms. Rivers gave the impression that she had misgivings about wearing fur. When people criticized or challenged her, she asked if they wore leather, suggesting that they were just as guilty. She also attempted to justify her fur by saying that she had rescue dogs, as if the kind deed of adopting animals gave her a free pass for other forms of cruelty. When she was challenged by activists at public events, she struck back, saying that her fur was 15 or 20 years old, as if wearing old fur doesn’t generate demand for new fur. As an aside, some of her fur was, in fact, new.

In the end, Ms. Rivers’ love of fur must have outweighed any guilt that she felt for wearing it. She had many opportunities to do the right thing by renouncing fur, as her own daughter Melissa did in a commercial for PETA, but she instead defended it and, at times, displayed contempt for those who challenged her, as shown in this video taken in July, 2014:

Because of her fame and unmatched consumption of fur, Joan Rivers will be one of the faces of fur when society relegates this barbaric form of animal cruelty to the history books. Now that she’s gone, will she come face-to-face with the hundreds off animals who were tortured and killed for her vanity?