Can we call ourselves feminists if we buy fast fashion?

[UglyCathKidstonBag]

I went to a food festival today and got speaking to someone handing out leaflets about fast fashion.

80% of the people who work in the garment industry in places like India, Bangladesh, Cambodia etc., are women aged 18-35.

They are working extreme hours with poor pay, terrible conditions (little ventilation, exposure to harmful chemicals, lack of water, poor sanitation) and many are experiencing malnutrition and cases of collapse are seen in most factories daily.

I didn’t get to speak to the woman for long as my DC were desperate for the loo and she was gone when we got back but she asked me this:

“Can we call ourselves feminists if we buy fast fashion?”

DJ Lippy New Look is one of my faves too Ive bought a lot of trousers from there.

When women regularly skip meals so their kids can eat expecting them to shop ethically is a bit unreasonable.

I think one of the main factors behind fast fashion is the declining spending power in the West - loss of manufacturing jobs, squeeze on middle class wages, zero hour financial insecurity.

I don't mean to criticise ethical food and clothes choices - it's brilliant that people care so much they want to use their spending power to encourage better business practices but people need to realise that these choices are luxuries.

From what I can gather these lists of 'good' and 'bad' stores are a bit suspect. I can't find the right pages but the Campaign for Clean Clothes avoid naming or shaming any brands - what they basically say is that it's pretty much impossible for any high street retailer (apart from the likes of People Tree) to be squeaky clean because of the way the industry operates. I'll look properly later but it's somewhere on here: cleanclothes.org

Ethical Shopper has a good reputation. But you often find that if one company is good with workers, they will be terrible on environmental impact or in another area. It's nigh on impossible to be a genuinely ethical shopper, even if you do have the cash to do it.

Buying things second hand is probably the best general course of action but not everyone wants to do that.

When women regularly skip meals so their kids can eat expecting them to shop ethically is a bit unreasonable.

Yes. And, at a tangent, why it was so awful Venice's clothes swaps have been shut down by middle class students just because it was Venice doing them.

Ethical capitlism is a contradiction in terms.

It's practically impossible to be ethical, due to the joined up natures of global supply chains. You can be a vegan but you bank with HSBC who have shares in a logging company destroying the amazon. The Co-Op -
www.pinknews.co.uk/2018/06/15/co-op-bank-refuses-account-to-feminist-group-after-it-actively-denied-trans-rights/

It's enough to drive you to chocolate - but then whoops Nestle!

Like to think of my poverty as an ethical choice, minimizing my contribution to a capitalistic system that is exploiting the masses and poising the planet. Yeah, not that I'm idle or anything...

This might not be a feminist issue - but does anyone know about the effect on the environment from man-made clothing materials such as as polyester. I have friends who won't wear wool or leather as they are vegans - but I feel like the plastics and oil that go into synthetic clothing have to be worse than the by-products of a food industry that isn't going anywhere any time soon.

Thats a good point, many oil based plastics such as polyester release estrogen mimicking compounds, and continue to do so as they degrade in the water or soil.
So apart from the petrochemical oil issue, they are an ecological hazard.

Yeah polyester - at least as I understand it - is basically plastic so it's going to sit in landfill forever.

For anyone interested, I recommend Lucy Siegle's book 'To Die For' although it was written a while ago and there might be more up to date stuff out there now. It covers the environmental and cruelty angles as well as sweatshops. I bought it hoping I would find a list of shops I could use with a clear conscience but it mostly made me realise what a tangled up mess it all is.

Rayon, modal and viscose are plant based fabrics.

They are but they’re very highly processed and dont breathe or function like cotton, wool etc do. I avoid them when sewing and I avoid them in rtw as well.

They will degrade in landfill though i guess

I am albways a bit doubtful about the idea that people are buying cheap clothes in Primark or wherever and throwing them away after a couple of wears. I don't know anyone who does that. I don't buy many clothes but do buy from Primark sometimes and they usually last me for years.

^See, everything is bad!

@DJLippy

The fact that you attended a food festival would suggest to me that you and I live in very different worlds.

It was free, it was in an air conditioned building were I could take my multiple children and my sick-of-this-heatwave disabled and pregnant body to cool off.

The question the woman handing out the leaflets was the question I asked here. It is an interesting question but it isn’t mine and it isn’t a statement posed with some kind of blind faith. It was a leaping off point for a thread (which I could only just return to because I was dealing with an emergency). I made it clear it was a question someone else asked.

To suggest I am classist or some kind of Tory for posing a question that someone else asked me is mind boggling. I usually really enjoy your posts and we have spoken on here before (I have named changed this week) but I think you have leaped to conclusions here that are unfair.

@Ugly - sorry it's the heat!

I re-read your post and did see that you asked the question that she asked - not posting it yourself. The 'Two worlds' analogy a bit very snarky and assumption jumpy.

Ethical consumption is something which only the middle class are able to make - so such a position ^that you can't be a feminist and shop at Primark - IS classist.

Plus it's a mindfield navigating which brands are 'ethical'.

Did you realise the average reading age in the UK is age 8. Age 8! How is somebody supposed to make informed decisions without the required reading comprehension skills?

The average reading age is 8? That's really shocking.

I don't doubt at all that if you're struggling you can't afford to be ethical but there are lots of people in the middle too buying fast fashion just because it's cheap and fun. I belong to a clothes group on Facebook with 30k members. A lot of them are buying cheap Chinese dresses for £8 a pop on a regular basis - it's clear buying clothes is their hobby. Someone posting up a nice one triggers lots of other people going and buying it. They're buying far more than they need - clothing in 2018 in the West definitely isn't just about necessity. We are greedy overconsumers as a society as a whole - hence mountain of still wearable clothes going to landfill. If the people in the middle and upper levels of society (I'm talking in terms of income) bought second hand and less overall, that would still make a difference.

There is one very important way this is a deeply feminist issue. Well two issues really, one female reproductive choice and two female access to equal education. In countries where these two things occur the birth rate becomes more manageable, poverty alleviates and starvation goes down. The reason cheap labour is so easily exploitable is families in the third world have so many more mouths to feed you pretty much have to take any available job no matter how heinous.

Trying to shop ethically is quite frankly a lot of fucking effort for little practical benefit. You want to make a real tangible difference? Spend the time you spent googling the least bad shops and find a charity that educates girls in the third world. Take whatever extra you’d be willing to spend on clothes and donate to said charity instead

I can be a SAHM and still call myself a feminist

I can be married - and change my name to my new husband's - and still call myself a feminist

I can buy fast fashion and still call myself a feminist

I try to buy ethically where possible (I'm probably one of the very few people who still boycotts Nestle and knows why), and everyone knows that fast fashion has got many problems associated with it. But it's just a guilt-tripping exercise to wheel out the "call yourself a feminist?" argument to try to shame women into changing their actions

don't mean to criticise ethical food and clothes choices - it's brilliant that people care so much they want to use their spending power to encourage better business practices but people need to realise that these choices are luxuries.

I buy almost all of my clothes from charity shops. Pretty much the only thing I Buy new are my kid's school branded jumpers. The high street is covered in charity shops, it's simply not true to say it's some sort of middle class luxury to buy ethically. I receive benefits, and do research where my clothes come from. Please don't imply that the working class with our "8 year old reading age" are too thick and too poor to think about the world we live in. FWIW most 8 year olds are perfectly capable readers and capable of understanding the information they read. Like most adults (even poor ones).

Right can I just clarify IT WAS NOT MY QUESTION.

It infuriates me when you see people on political shows saying solemnly "well, we are all to blame for buying cheap clothes". Because if someone on the panel said "well, if garment workers in Bangladesh had a trade union they might not have to work in a factory that was liable to collapse on top of them" the others would probably denounce him or her as a dinosaur.

The fashion isnt always "fast" Ive got loads of things from New Look that have lasted me ages. i still have jumpers from 2006.

Actually, I think there is a very good comparison to prostitution here.

My individual right as a poor person to buy something cheaply that I know can personally lead to the trafficking, violence, and enslavement of women is fine because I want cheap fashionable clothes. Therefore not my fault. I could buy less fashionable a year out of season clothes but want this now.

My individual right as a poor man who no one will fuck to buy a woman that I know can personally lead to the trafficking, violence, and enslavement of women is fine because I want need sex. Therefore not my fault. I could make an effort to date a woman or use my hand or sex robot but I don't want to make any effort.

I volunteer in a charity shop. The amount of clothing sent for recycling is horrendous, but we can only put so much stock out on the rails due to space. So the more people buy, the more we can sell. Cropped white trousers, anyone, in this heatwave? Our shop is full of them, all sizes, £4 a pair.

Polyester (even recycled polyester) releases micro plastics into the water supply when washed.

But non-organic cotton harms the environment with huge use of pretty unpleasant chemicals, land and water. Organic cotton is better on the chemicals front, (H&M stock a lot but generally just for plain basics not a full wardrobe) but still hugely intensive in its water use.

Charity shops are good for keeping your own personal conscience clean but are not a scalable solution (but they are a part of the RRR equation insofar as they reduce overall demand).

Linen is pretty good but expensive. Some of the semi-synthetics like modal and tencel have their advtantages but opinions vary.

On the original point about treatment of female workers I’d be inclined to stick with the big names: top end ethical if you can afford it, or the better rated of the cheaper brands like H&M if you can’t and keep signing petitions and writing to brands and MPs to make it clear that you care. Primark can be named and shamed and continually forced to act. That nameless brand on a market stall or that ebay seller knocking out 8 quid dresses will never be subject pressure to act ethically.

And I’m not convinced by the choice to purchase exclusively from Europe. I might be naive but I don’t think that a job in the garment industry in Bangladesh for an adult woman has to be so dreadful that it should never be an option. It’s not like prostitution in that respect unless you’re a really hardcore anti capitalist.