Regardless of your age, if you’ve read any news, shopped for clothes, or used TikTok as a source of information in the past year, you’ve probably heard of Sheen.
If you haven’t, SHIN is a $100 billion clothing company that aims to “bring fashion to everyone.” Initially popular due to its low cost and modern designs, even after two years it has come under fire for heavy conservation and use of child labor.
Clothing is just one symbolic item we buy. It used to be expensive – it was spun and washed at home much less than the current sanitary rules – and now it is not. Cotton seeds are sown by children thousands of miles away, collected by women workers in Asia, shipped to your local mall, and eventually end up in the ocean as microplastics.
None of this is news. Hundreds of news stories about other companies were posted years before Shin came to light. However, unlike his predecessors, Shin not only thrived after being exposed, but also embraced fast fashion as a cause. Shane managed what others could not; The art of losing to the edge of maximum profitability by capturing the consumer’s eye and understanding our powerlessness in the face of change.
A painstaking examination of clothing strikes at the moral hypocrisy of American society and scratches the surface of the half-familiar horrors of most merchandise. If we stop and think for a moment; We recognize that our global marketplace is unprecedented in the human experience. The online marketplace continues to offer dream-like products at low annual prices, even as the quality continues to rise.
From a client’s point of view, this bounty seems almost as innocuous as the birthright of some urban Americans. But of course, internally, it is the opposite of non-conflict. It takes a lot of energy to maintain. When you scratch the surface of the force, you realize there’s something a little scary about it. If you look deeper, you will understand that it is suffering.
I remember reading a different article about a girl named Beatty who worked as a garment worker in one of these factories. Her story was one among thousands; Slave labor is better than starvation. She lost a finger and years of her life, but she considers herself lucky.
BT’s story is an example of the reality of many of these people. Closing these marketplaces seems to only push people underground, and “active culture” does little to acknowledge personal stories.
Fortunately for us consumers who make money from these enterprises, we have no choice. We can shop off-price or thrift our clothes, sure, but the real violence is needed before the product hits the shelves. And here’s where companies have one last trick – they allow us to hate our clothes and still keep buying them. Infuriated by the image of an exploited child or polluted rivers, the masking of commodity goods — past all labels and trademarks — soothes us with the convincing denial we need. Shane may be another drop in the bucket of problems hidden behind the colorful backgrounds in our Instagram feed, but it’s an important example of the chasm between what consumers actually know and the public image these brands create.
So what do we do? To be honest, I have no clue. Personally, I have tried to distance myself from the most popular sources of fast fashion and scour the internet for hidden and obscure brands on Instagram, possibly participating in a comparable supply chain. Finally, shopping for clothes is hard to avoid and is definitely an ethical activity. But I still think there are some good things to know about it.
Amara Mozamel is a senior at Century High School. Send comments to Jeff Peters on the Dozen Columns.
jpieters@postbulletin.com
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