If You Were Truly Woke AF, You’d Stop Buying Fast Fashion
Performative wokeness is probably invading your newsfeed of choice every day. But while girls on Twitter are dragging racist trolls and posting political memes, I bet you don’t pay any attention to the Forever 21 tank top they’re wearing in their profile pictures.
Granted, being woke isn’t really something most people aspire to be. Like, yes, you want to be aware and not be ignorant, but the idea of wokeness just becomes a dick-measuring competition that nobody wins.
If you are going to pride yourself on being the pillar of justice in our society, though, you’d better quit your fast fashion addiction.
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See, it doesn’t take a ton of research to figure out that fast fashion is absolutely atrocious for the environment.
“The clothing industry is the second largest polluter in the world…second only to oil,” designer Eileen Fisher said (and kind of exaggerated) in a speech she made two years ago.
To the best of our knowledge, Eileen didn’t have the receipts and there are no official facts and figures to back up this claim. But, her point still stands: fashion leads to tons and tons of pollution.
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The thing about fast fashion is that it’s not just harming one industry. In fact, it pretty much touches every resource-based industry in some way or another.
Reporter Alden Wicker wrote for Racked that the fashion industry “touches agriculture (cotton, flax, hemp), animal agriculture (leather, fur, wool, cashmere), petroleum (polyester and other synthetics), forestry (rayon), mining (metal and stones), construction (retail stores), shipping, and, of course, manufacturing.”
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That’s a lot of shit. A lot of shit that your $11 bandage dress is taking a toll on.
And unlike deleting your Uber app or putting #resist in your Instagram bio, avoiding fast fashion is actually pretty damn hard — especially if you’re on a budget.
But there are totally options, like buying clothes on re-sell apps like Depop or at stores like Buffalo Exchange. Thrifting is obvi always an option if you don’t mind digging.
On the other hand, you could just allocate your money differently. Instead of buying ten dresses from H&M, you could buy one nice dress from a higher-end brand that doesn’t ruin the environment. Or even just one nice dress from H&M that you know you’ll wear for years instead of throwing away in a month! The point is to be less wasteful. Still, you have to do your research. Just because a brand is expensive doesn’t mean it’s eco-friendly.
We’re not trying to shame anyone. I mean, I’m legit wearing a dress from River Island as I write this. But what we are saying is your shopping habit is probs to def ravaging the environment and contributing to global warming. What if we all paid the same amount of attention to that as we did to, say, tweeting #resist and avoiding factory farmed foods?
It’s easy to ignore it, but it’s better to know what’s up. That way, you’ll think twice before buying another bralette from Zara that you really don’t need, or you’ll at least make plans to buy eco-friendly shit once you get a raise. And do you know what’s great about swearing off (or chilling out on) fast fashion? Way more money and closet space. Plus you’ll maybe see this earth in one piece for a few more years than originally planned!
