The High Cost of Cheap Fashion
Naomi Wolf
OXFORD – I confess: I do it, too. Like most Western women, I do it regularly, and it is a guilty pleasure every time. It is hard to listen to one’s conscience when one is faced with so much incredible temptation.
I am talking, of course, about cheap trendy fashion. I'll visit a Zara – or H&M, or, now that I am in the United Kingdom for the summer, the amazing Primark – and snap up items that are “cute,” effectively disposable, and so shockingly inexpensive that one does a double take.
I need to face my addiction – and so do all women like me.
Fashion has been transformed by the recent emergence of retail chains that hire good designers to make throwaway clothing and accessories that are right on trend. This evolution has freed Western women from the tyranny of a fashion industry that in the bad old days would dictate a style, compelling women to invest heavily in updating their wardrobes, and then blithely declare their entire closets obsolete – again and again, with no end in sight.
Enter the mass-production style emporia, and Western women have the seemingly delicious and liberating option of getting this summer's must-have tiny floral retro eighties print sundress – which will look appallingly frumpy by next summer – for $12. They – we – can invest in classic items that don’t age so fast, and absorb these low-cost trendy disposables as the mood hits.
These stores solve a psychological problem for us, too, since one can shop at length – a pleasure that may well be hard-wired in the female brain, owing to our evolutionary development as gatherers – without feeling sick about one’s overspending by the end of the exercise.
But what has been liberating for Western women is a system built literally on the backs of women in the developing world. How do Primark and its competitors in the West’s shopping malls and High Streets keep that cute frock so cheap? By starving and oppressing Bangladeshi, Chinese, Mexican, Haitian, and other women, that’s how.
We all know that cheap clothing is usually made in sweatshop conditions – and usually by women. And we know – or should know – that women in sweatshops around the world report being locked in and forbidden to use bathrooms for long periods, as well as sexual harassment, violent union-busting, and other forms of coercion.
But, like any family secret that would cause us discomfort if faced directly, we Western women turn a blind eye to it. Boycotts of sweated college t-shirts in the United States led to fairer manufacturing practices, and boycotts of coffee and produce, led mostly by women consumers, resulted in fair-trade purchases by major supermarkets. And more affluent women do have a history of effective sweated labor boycotts in the past: in the Victorian era, impoverished women were going blind in the `needle trades', turning out elaborate embroideries for wealthy women, until revulsion on the part of these consumers forced conditions to better. By contrast, today, there is no major movement led by developed-world women to stop this global exploitation by cut-rate manufacturers – even though our money is the one tool powerful enough to force manufacturers to change their ways.
The reason is simple: we like things the way they are.
But it will become increasingly difficult for us to maintain our “out of sight, out of mind” attitude. To their credit, women in the developing world – some of the most exploited and coerced women on earth – are raising their voices.
For example, The Financial Times reported on June 23 that, “Hundreds of Bangladeshi garment factories supplying western buyers such as Marks and Spencer, Tesco, Walmart, and H&M gradually reopened under heavy police protection…after days of violent protests by tens of thousands of laborers demanding higher wages.” A thousand riot police used rubber bullets and tear gas on the workers, and hundreds were injured, but they did not back down.
Most of the two million people working in Bangladesh’s garment industry are women, and they are the lowest-paid garment workers in the world, earning $25 a month. But they are demanding that their monthly wage be almost tripled, to $70. Their leaders make the point that, at current pay levels, workers cannot feed themselves or their families.
Economists predict that strikes and unrest will escalate in Bangladesh, and also in Vietnam, with even investment bankers quoted by The Financial Times calling wages for women garment workers in these countries “unsustainably low.”
The factories have reopened – for now. But Bangladesh’s government is considering an increase in the minimum wage. If it happens, one of the world’s most oppressed legal workforces will have scored a major victory – largely symbolic for now, but one that will inspire other women garment workers around the world to rise up in protest.
Western women, we should challenge ourselves to follow this story and find ways to do what is right in changing our own consumption patterns. It is past time to show support for women who are suffering systematic, globalized, cost-effective gender discrimination in the most overt ways – ways that most of us no longer have to face. Let us support a fair-trade economy, and refuse to shop at outlets targeted by activists for unfair employment practices (for more information, go to http://www.worldwatch.org/node/1485).
If women around the world who are held in the bondage of sweated labor manage to win this crucial fight, that cute dress at Primark may cost a fair amount more. But it already costs too much to the women who can’t afford to feed and house themselves and their children.
That $3 pair of adorable lace-up sandals? The price – given the human costs – really is too good to be true.
Naomi Wolf is a political activist and social critic whose most recent book is Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2010.
www.project-syndicate.org
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Rita 11:54 02 Jul 10
What does the best dressed fashion-victim activist wear on the speaker circuit this season? A piece of cheap, sweatshop fashion of course! It seems integrity has never been much of an issue for Wolf. That take on the sweatshop fashion garment as an object of liberation, is a masterpiece of the self indulged narcissism of an envious, greedy psyche. Sadly a lot of women buy cheap clothes because that is all they can afford, a lot of them buy cheap clothes because they don't know about sweatshops, (yes, still!) and plenty of women, (like Wolf) buy them because ultimately they just don't give a shit, it is too hard to consider doing the right thing when the right look is so important. The difference between Wolf and most other sweatshop clothes buyers is that none of them pretend to be social critics and "activists". Wolf knew she bought sweatshop clothing, she had the money to buy otherwise and she chose not to. Wolf always peddles her personal agenda as the universally significant - working out all those heavy, body image problems and the profound envy at the root of her psychic structure, probably doesn't leave a lot of time for noticing the rest of the world. This is a world in short supply of just about everything - from fair deals to genuine compassion - and as this puny "mea culpa" article so amply demonstrates, we are in dire shortage of decent public intellectuals as well.
agnesnine 10:02 03 Jul 10
We're all guilty of hypocrisy - and this is hypocrisy, Ms Wolf. To shrive yourself publicly of your sin with silken style and a titter or two hand to mouth is abhorrent and reveals more than you think it does. Yes, it's more truthful to admit fault before you attack the same in others - haven't I done just the same? - but a REAL activist, chains herself to raiings, gets run over by horses, goes into ghettos of injustice and oppression to suffer and become believable by sharing the suffering, not this ... cant. Your nerve, your cheek is a particularly stinging slap on every other cheek that stings at this moment in Dubai [expat Filipina housemaids are routinely slapped and insulted] or is damp with tears in Dhaka [exhausted native seamstresses weep with bent heads under poor light] ... Ms Wolf, you can't lean back shriven, selfapproving and satisfied you've done your bit. Tell us I'm wrong and 'outside print' you do walk your talk amongst those for whom hand-to-mouth has a more visceral meaning.
jakaya 01:42 05 Jul 10
ok, this shouldnt turn into a naomi-bashing thread, i wish i could retract my original comment (jakaya) as it was written in hate and haste due to recent memories of being the guy i mentioned in the comment, and i apologise for the unnecessary tone. After reading through your article again, i agree with it totally, and got the wrong end of the stick when you talked only of oppressed women.
re the commenter that said: "but a REAL activist, chains herself to railings, gets run over by horses, goes into ghettos of injustice and oppression to suffer and become believable by sharing the suffering" - there is no need for every activist to be so selfless, there is a need for balance, but a dead activist can no longer contribute to any revolution (except in rare cases of matyrdom). It is just as much a contribution to humanity to 'wake up the masses' as it is to be a martyr, and you cannot have everyone doing the same thing.
Anyway, Naomi, i have great deep respect for your work, especially 'end of america' and the way you handle interviews with those of opposing views. You're truly inspirational and, once the people win (and i mean globally, as one) against the 1% in control, I have a feeling you'll be a legend,
Take care,
john@jakaya.com
jakaya 01:46 05 Jul 10
...and @agnesnine, i agree with your observations on the Dubai filipina maids, i've heard many similar stories (and worst) from my friends and family in the phils. Although its hard to expect anything different from this current global system where a very small minority control the resources that should belong to all people (not to a state, kingdom, elites, or other such names they've acquired)
hanmeng 04:38 05 Jul 10
As Ms. Wolf could find out by reading works like Leslie T. Chang's Factory Girls, jobs in so-called "sweatshops" are often a step up for rural women and end up empowering them. Ms. Wolf shouldn't feel guilty about buying cheap clothing made in them. On the contrary, she should feel guilty about trying to limit opportunities for women to work in them.
GREGORYABUTLER 03:04 15 Jul 10
So, who do we blame for the sweatshop labor conditions in the Third World garment industry?
Do we blame the Third World garment factory owners?
Or the fashion design houses of the imperialist countries?
Or the "Factors" - the financial middlemen of the garment business?
NO, of course not!
Why criticise wealthy businessmen for the labor abuses they practice?
Instead, let's blame working class women in the imperialist countries who just want to buy a pretty dress at a reasonable price!
What a total bunch of nonsense!
hanmeng 10:10 22 Jul 10
jakaya 05:29 02 Jul 10
ok, thats cool. Did u know 'end of america' is the same 'end' of every nation? Right now you're talking so much of the plight of women within un-dev countries, but do you also know that men in un-dev countries also go thru a lot of bullshit. For example, do u think it's easy for a man to let their wife go work in an 'entertainment' club becoz he couldn't get work? No, it's fucked either way you look at it.
Where is the fault? I'd say it's the system, not the division between men and women. It's easy to say women are persecuted in developing countries, but its not easy for you to say that developing countries will ever develop. because your country will never let them. Fuck all this bullshit of sweatshops, start thinking why do 1% of people control 7bn ppl. You speak good shit, i love all ur lectures, u speak so much sense, but i don't understand why you're so narrow-minded on this post.
We're all in this together. Americans seem to be so surprised that the rest of the world is going thru shit. Wake up. I kinda expected more from you Naomi, i respect u - john@jakaya.com