Watch: Cosplayer Transforms Into a Lion Using Only Vegan Materials
Joo Skellington Teams Up With PETA to Share Cruelty-Free Tips
For Immediate Release:
July 16, 2019
Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382
Just ahead of San Diego Comic-Con and the hotly anticipated release of The Lion King, cosplay expert Joo Skellington (Jose Davalos) has teamed up with PETA for a new video in which he transforms into a lion using only cruelty-free products and vegan fabrics. As he explains, “It’s really unnecessary to use animal materials in the making of your costume .… [W]henever you’re buying wigs [or] eyelashes … [t]here’s always vegan solutions.”
Skellington goes on to list some of the common things for kind cosplayers to avoid, including makeup that was tested on animals, leather made from cows’ skin, animal fur, feathers, and angora. “Some of the most iconic feature films like 101 Dalmatians, Blade Runner, Guardians of the Galaxy—they are all using synthetic materials,” he says.
Animals on fur farms spend their entire lives confined to filthy wire cages before they’re electrocuted, gassed, poisoned, or even skinned alive for their fur. Cows’ throats are slit before their skin is cut off for leather, and feathers or angora may be pulled from birds’ or rabbits’ skin while the animals are still alive. In cosmetics tests, substances are dripped into animals’ sensitive eyes, smeared onto their skin, sprayed in their faces, or forced down their throats.
PETA’s Beauty Without Bunnies database currently lists more than 4,000 compassionate personal-care companies that don’t test on animals, and the group offers tips for finding vegan clothing, shoes, and accessories on its website. A guide to vegan cosplay is also available here.
Skellington is part of a long list of celebrities—including Gillian Anderson, Tricia Helfer, Madelaine Petsch, Krysten Ritter, Mayim Bialik, and Laura Vandervoort—who’ve teamed up with PETA or its affiliates to promote kindness to animals.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on, wear, or abuse in any other way”—opposes speciesism, which is a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.
