Stefania Ferrario: “Ewe Can Do Better! Wear Vegan.”

“The “Women, Life, Freedom” movement that has taken hold in Iran in recent weeks is revolutionary, but these acts of defiance and cries to be heard are not new.

Young Iranian women have been involved in small but consistent evolutionary actions during the entire 44 years of the Islamic Republic of Iran, particularly in the past two decades, too often paying the price with their lives.

Fighting for gender equality is everyone’s job, to enhance awareness and bring about change. There can be no democracy without first respecting women’s rights and restoring their dignity and freedom.

Let the Regime know the whole world is watching them.” – Venus & Stefania

Stefania Ferrario (born Stephanie Denise Kightley; 14 June 1993 – twitter: @stefania_model ) is an Australian model and activist. She gained notoriety through various efforts to raise awareness on subjects including body positivity, animal cruelty, and veganism.

Stefania Ferrario, activist and model
Stefania is a trilingual, bisexual model known for her gender-fluid look. She shaved her head in 2012 to show that bald is beautiful and, in 2015, spearheaded the ‘Drop the Plus’ campaign to end use of
the term ‘plus size’ in the fashion industry.

 

New York November 3, 2021 – To encourage shoppers to cross wool off their fall shopping lists, PETA has hit the Garment District with a cheeky larger-than-life message from Australian model and body-positive activist Stefania Ferrario: “Ewe Can Do Better! Wear Vegan.”

Ferrario—who is the face of Dita Von Teese’s lingerie line in Australia and has modeled for numerous other top brands, both there and in Italy—has a clause in her agency contract stating that she won’t wear any animal-derived materials in advertisements. And in a video for PETA Australia, she explains why sheep shearing should turn anyone off of wool: “The workers are being paid for the volume of wool they’re producing, so when they’re shearing the sheep, they’re going really fast,” she says. “The sheep can end up having horrific gashes, bleeding, and then they’ll sew the sheep up without any anesthetic.”

Since 2014, PETA has released 14 exposés documenting cruelty to sheep at 117 wool operations on four continents. The most recent wool-industry exposé—of the wool industry in Australia, which produces 88% of the world’s supply for apparel—reveals that workers stood on a sheep’s neck, punched sheep in the face, kicked them, cut off swaths of their flesh, and left many with bleeding wounds. Data from the Higg Materials Sustainability Index show that because of the greenhouse-gas emissions created during its production, wool has a far greater impact on the climate crisis than its vegan counterparts.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

PETA’s billboard is located at 298 W. 40^th St., at the intersection with Eighth Avenue.