HOLLYWOOD WOMEN TAKE LEAD IN ANIMAL-RIGHTS ACTIVISM

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, January 30, 1993                   TAG: 9301300230
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: VICKI CROKE KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
HOLLYWOOD WOMEN TAKE LEAD IN ANIMAL-RIGHTS ACTIVISM
When Kim Basinger hit the Willard Intercontinental Hotel in Washington Jan. 19 for the "Animals' Inaugural Ball" held by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, she was following in the glamorous paw prints of many other Hollywood actresses who are active in animal causes.
Although Bob Barker and Earl Holliman are known for their animal activism, the best-known celebrities in the movement are women. Is there a special affinity between Hollywood women and vulnerable animals? Women who are chewed up and abused and treated like, well, cattle by the star system? Is it because, as one newsroom wag says, pictures of celebrities are more eye-catching with an animal in them? Is there a sex kitten and big cat connection?
"That's a bit of a stretch," says Tippi Hedren. But Hedren, star of Hitchcock's "The Birds" and "Marnie," and an active advocate for animal issues, adds, "It is true that the animals accept you no matter what - they never say you're too old or you're too young or that you're not blond enough."
More likely, these women - Brigitte Bardot, Doris Day, Betty White, Kirstie Alley, Loretta Swit, Brooke Shields, Stefanie Powers, Rue McClanahan, Mary Tyler Moore and the late Audrey Hepburn among them - fit into a general demographic trend. More than 60 percent of the country's vet students are women (up from less than 10 percent in the late '60s), and at Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine, that figure is 70 percent. The mailing list for the MSPCA's Animals magazine is 82 percent female. And though the American Association of Zookeepers doesn't have a statistical breakdown, they report a huge increase in their ranks of women.
"I think it is just a reflection of the general population," says Betty White, one of the most respected and tireless crusaders. Much of her effort is on behalf of the Morris Animal Foundation, a non-profit group that funds animal health studies at veterinary colleges. White's is the kind of low-key work that doesn't grab headlines the way, she says, "throwing blood on a fur coat" does. But Morris has had a hand in finding vaccines for feline leukemia and parvovirus.
White has also worked with the Los Angeles Zoo for more than a decade and says 52 percent of the keepers are now women. White says she thinks nurturing animals comes a little more naturally to women - "but that isn't to say I don't think men can be good at it, too." During the filming of her show "The Pet Set," she says, she was never injured despite having elephants, lions, water buffaloes, ostriches and zebras in the studio. She says women may "have a little more trust and confidence in animals."
Famed anthropologist Louis Leakey was convinced that women make better field researchers and are more observant. In early meetings with him, Dian Fossey, one of Leakey's celebrated "trimates" (Fossey, Goodall and Galdikas) studying primates, discussed this with him. According to Fossey, Leakey felt women were better at the game "because of their patience and capacity to give more fully of themselves."
Carol Antoinette Peacock, a Boston psychologist in private practice, believes that women are socially permitted to be more vulnerable than men, more willing to relinquish control and more attuned to others. She says these things are not exclusive to women, but men are discouraged in this society from displaying these characteristics.
"I think women read cues better. We take all those skills we have to connect to other people and use them to connect with animals. That isn't to say that men can't. But men are embarrassed to fall apart around a cute little animal. We let our defenses down and are better able to commune with the animal."
The long list of female stars involved with animal causes would certainly seem to support that.
Hedren runs the Shambala reserve, which is made up of animals used in her movie "Roar" (never released in the United States) and abandoned big cats. She now has two elephants and 63 lions, tigers, leopards and cougars.
Stefanie Powers is one of the directors of the William Holden Wildlife Foundation, which runs a 15-acre education and conservation center on the slopes of Mount Kenya. Kirstie Alley is helping to fund a proposed chimpanzee sanctuary in Burundi for the Jane Goodall Institute. Mary Tyler Moore and Brooke Shields have helped the ASPCA in New York.
Loretta Swit is a hurricane of humane work. She is doing a lot of work for the MSPCA and has campaigned against furs and trapping; in the 1980s, she successfully fought to stop commercial hunting of harp seal pups in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Her show, "Those Incredible Animals," is carried on The Discovery Channel.
Doris Day has two foundations, the Doris Day Pet Foundation and Doris Day Animal League. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, "Knowing her soft heart, people call Day all the time and tell her they'll take their dog to the SPCA to be put to sleep if she doesn't come and get it."

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB