Goop’s Leather BDSM Kit Faces PETA Backlash

Group Says Paltrow Should Replace Kinky Cuffs With Vegan Version

For Immediate Release:
November 19, 2019

Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382

Because Goop’s holiday gift guide contains a $1,350 Restraining Arts Kit—complete with leather wrist cuffs, ankle cuffs, and a paddle—PETA has fired off a letter this morning urging company founder Gwyneth Paltrow to switch it out for Earth- and animal-friendly vegan BDSM gear immediately.

“No cow consents to being strung up, slaughtered, and skinned for cuffs and collars,” says PETA Manager Rachel Stotts. “The cruelty and environmental devastation of the leather industry should be a hard limit in any sexual hijinks, and PETA is asking Gwyneth to promote vegan bondage gear instead.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear or abuse in any other way”—opposes speciesism, which is a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.

PETA’s letter to Paltrow follows.

Dear Gwyneth,

We have no problem with Goop encouraging people to get a little kinky this holiday season, but a real leather BDSM kit—which caused real and involuntary suffering to animals who were killed and skinned—is not a turn-on.

For the leather bits of the “Restraining Arts Kit,” animals were restrained and killed. Their pain was not consensual, and leather is not environmentally friendly. Animal agriculture—which includes the skins industry—is responsible for nearly a fifth of human-induced greenhouse-gas emissions and is the main driver of deforestation in the Amazon. As shown in PETA’s exposés of the leather industry in Bangladesh, Brazil, and India, it’s animals and workers, including children, who pay the highest price for leather. Whether it’s cows and bulls being branded on the face, electroshocked, and beaten before finally being slaughtered or the communities whose water is poisoned by chemicals such as chromium flowing from nearby tanneries, there is absolutely nothing pleasurable about leather for humans, other animals, or the environment.

We’re asking that you take a strong position against cruelty to animals and show people that they can spread love to all sentient beings by opting for Earth-friendly, vegan options instead of leather and other animal-derived materials, in and out of the bedroom.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

With kind regards,

Rachel Stotts

PETA