Before Easter, NYPD Blue’s Charlotte Ross joins the ranks of Christy Turlington and Pamela Anderson in helping PETA’s ‘I’d rather go naked than wear fur’ series

Photographed by Robert Sebree

YPD BLUE performers getting their kit off mightn’t be anything new, but from memory this marks the first time that one of them has done so for a cause other than ratings.
   Twice-Emmy-nominated Charlotte Ross, who plays Det Connie McDowell on the series, bares it all for animals in a PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) campaign scheduled to run in Gear magazine before Easter with the tagline ‘I’d rather show my buns than wear fur.’
   The photographs were shot by Robert Sobree in Los Angeles earlier this year.
   In the PETA release, Ross says, ‘I can’t think of anything more heartless than to torment and kill animals in the name of fashion.’
   She is not alone: Dominique Swain, Pamela Anderson, Kim Basinger, Sheryl Lee, and Christy Turlington have all appeared in the ‘Naked’ series of advertisements over the years.
   Without high-profile endorsement from figures such as Ross, PETA risks being seen as a fringe group. When PETA mounted a protest several seasons ago at New York Fashion Week, leading to increased security, it didn’t earn many marks within the fashion industry, even from members who would normally be sympathetic to its cause.
   Campaigns such as ‘Naked’ are considered by some to be more civilized and allows readers to make up their own minds.
   Often, animals raised for fur face lives in small cages, often sick or injured and left unattended to, unprotected in extreme weather conditions, or days of agony in traps, tearing flesh and breaking bones in a struggle to get free.
   However, action from animal rights’ groups have brought the ill treatment to light.

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