Hi everyone! As part of Week 9’s lecture, we were required to watch the “True Cost” documentary, which talks about the environmental and socio-economic impacts brought about by the “enormous and rapacious” fashion industry. In this post, I share some of my thoughts and takeaways.

In driving this lucrative and capitalistic industry, cutting corners are accepted as part of the fashion business model and some of the impacts mentioned include:

• Poor working conditions and lax labour laws
• Workplace violence, protests for basic human rights in sweatshops
• Suicides among Indian farmers who are unable to repay their debts
• Leather factories and chromium pollution

Rejecting the mainstream fashion narrative

The documentary speaks of a fashion narrative that is commonly used as an excuse by retailers and individuals to justify the impacts of the industry. This narrative normalises low-wage manufacturing and sweatshops as these are arguably part of the very process that help raise living standards and quality of life in developing countries. There is a perception that “other alternatives are much worse”. While this is a reasonable assumption to some extent, it greatly downplays the right to minimum wage and safe working conditions within sweatshops. The documentary rightly criticises this narrative, which mainstreams the plight of the garment workers. This narrative also legitimises hegemonic structures and allows some form of “naturalisation” of the poor working conditions and lax regulations within the sweatshops, which would not help push for systemic changes in the industry.

As economist Richard Wolff surmises in the documentary, “If the system does not change, we are leaving intact the decision-making of enterprises…, subject to the same pattern of rewards and punishments, which will sooner or later make them reimpose there or elsewhere, the very conditions [we are] fighting against”

Gendered differences, feminisation of the garment/textile industry?

In class yesterday, we discussed whether it is a coincidence that the majority of textile workers are women and that textile workers are among the lowest-paid industrial workers globally. During the class discussion, a classmate raised that the coincidence may be attributed to the feminisation of the industry where women are expected to fill the roles of seamstresses. Applying an eco-feminist perspective, I think it is crucial to see that a gendered division of labour exists where women are said to inhabit only the more domestic and private spheres. When women enter economically productive spheres, they are often not equipped with the necessary resources and tools to stand up for themselves. Factory owners exploit this and continue to subordinate women who remain subservient to their demands to work overtime or below minimum wage. Beyond this, however, we need to also recognise how this inadvertently intertwines women and nature. With their more feminine roles assigned to women in the fashion industry, this means that they will be more directly and disproportionately affected by the harms brought by the industry. To address environmental problems within our capitalistic-patriarchal system, we need to first address women’s problems and take a more gendered approach in analysing the impacts of the fashion industry.

Hope everyone took something away from the documentary and the class discussion! Until then, let’s keep running away from fast fashion!

Cheers,

Chermaine