‘What is the Cost of Our Self-Expression?’: Why Buying Fast Fashion is Anti-Feminist

By Ryan London

*TW: violence against women and marginalised genders*

Feminism is ever-changing, being shaped and re-shaped to fit our needs and desires, encompassing a plethora of causes from voting rights, wage equality and the right to live free from violence. Over and over, we have looked at ourselves in the mirror and asked, ‘who are we excluding from our emancipation?’ And over and over we have widened our net. In the words of the Combahee River Collective, to free all of us, we must begin with those living at the intersections of oppression.

While this awareness has rightfully been extended to Black, Asian, migrant, trans, disabled, and other communities of women and gender minorities, there still exists a group whose exploitation is constantly forgotten by even the most exemplary feminists. I am referring to the people who make and sew the clothing that empowers us: those who stitch so we may sing.

In contrast with the people working in garment factories, many Westerners engage with consumption as a feminist act. We consume clothing as a means to empower ourselves, especially as we’ve gained more control over our incomes. We no longer require a man’s signature to open a bank account; dual-income families are common, and all faculties of higher education are more or less available to us. Many of us take pride in the financial independence our predecessors have fought for (and that non-white, non-cis women continue to fight for), and are now able to use our incomes however we please.

Clothing is extremely important for comfort in our daily life, as well as combatting systematic forces like misogyny, sizeism and transphobia. With the knowledge that clothing and consent are unrelated, we are freer than ever to use what we wear as a means of expressing our style, gender identity and sexuality. It allows us to feel comfortable in our bodies, accentuating the parts of ourselves that we love, or hiding our insecurities. Perhaps most important of all is that with mass production, there is now more than ever clothing options for fat folks and those with ‘non-standard’ proportions.

However, in harnessing the power of clothing in the face of oppression, we have forgotten about the people who make our clothes, the majority of whom are women of colour trapped in the cycle of poverty. According to the Clean Clothes Campaign, ‘women are desirable in the garment industry because employers take advantage of cultural stereotypes… reproductive and domestic responsibilities such as cleaning, cooking and childcare constrain women’s ability to seek other types of employment.’ What feels like a feminist act – whether it’s buying clothing with our earned incomes or ‘treating ourselves’ – may in fact be anti-feminist for a person somewhere else in the world, and we need to keep them in mind.

There are an estimated 60-70 million garment workers worldwide; around 75% are believed to be women. With poor occupational health and safety, they are exposed to precarious infrastructure (like that of the 2013 Rhana Plaza collapse), toxic substances, a lack of breaks, and are paid criminally low rates (in one brand’s Leicester factory, workers were paid less than two pounds per day).

Sweatshop labour is not a new phenomenon, nor is it exclusive to poorer countries. With the onset of industrialisation, sweatshop labour emerged in the UK and spread to Europe and North America. Factory deaths, maiming and widespread abuses led to rampant strikes culminating in labour reforms, enhanced social security and occupational health and safety. Slowly and surely, sweatshops were phased out of Europe and North America.

However, ‘phased out’ is not the right choice of words. Rather, these sweatshops were shipped away. Today, the majority of this precarious work is completed in countries with lower labour costs and less regulation of shady behaviour. Often, we speak of work as a contract freely entered into by labourers who ostensibly have as much power as their employers in the working relationship. Of course, power dynamics can never be entered into freely, especially when money is involved. People living paycheque to paycheque cannot afford to quit their job in the hope of finding a better one.

Our consumption is, in so many ways, anti-feminist. We feed the supply chain that pays people very little, keeping them trapped in the cycle of poverty. Yes, we have successfully advanced our financial equality, but what we choose to do with it may very well enable the financial oppression of other individuals elsewhere.

Also worth noting is the environmental impact of clothing consumption. According to Aishwariya & Jaisi, 5% of global landfill space is taken up by textile waste, and the average lifespan of a garment is only three years. Textile waste takes 200+ years to decompose and contributes to soil degradation, carbon emissions and microfibers affecting sea life and birds.

As consumers and marginalised folks, it is not we who are entirely at fault for the mistreatment of women and marginalised people around the world. This is especially true when it comes to poor women who struggle to financially access clothing and women who struggle to find their size. Rather, it is the institutions of domination (patriarchy, capitalism, etc.) that enable large corporations and governments to enact labour and environmental abuses that are anti-feminist, classist and racist, among other things. When the onus is placed entirely on the consumer, it diverts attention away from legislators who are in a much better position to reform business practices than we are.

We did not ask to inherit a world dominated by colonial empires that favours masculinity over femininity, profit-seeking companies over altruistic communities, or a planet sick from pollution. Instead of assuming guilt and blame, let us reform our feminism and extend our fight to those ‘invisible’ people who are suffering at the intersections of race, class and gender. Let’s ask ourselves: in the society we’ve fought hard to shape, what is the cost of our self-expression?