I rushed to the closet and checked the other two pairs that are for my daily wear. One looked ok enough. The other had the telltale signs of a frayed bottom.
Back in the old country, that is how we wore clothes--until they were frayed. I remember my grandmother joking about one of those shorts that I had worn out: "துணிய கிழிக்க சந்துல ஆணி இருக்கா?" (Do you have nails in your butt to tear the cloth?)
If I am comfy in them, why toss them away, right?
But, unlike my childhood, I now have way more clothes than I could ever need. Work clothes. Casual clothes. Shirts. Tshirts. Sweaters. Fleece.
And I am not even trying to keep up with the fashion trends. Some of my clothes are more than a decade old! One can easily imagine the nightmare if I even remotely kept pace with what is current!
The pace at which clothes go out of style should worry us. Leave along the mental health of the fashion-conscious. (Did you look at any of the photos of iVanka when her ultra-stylish outfit malfunctioned?) Fast fashion messes up the life of workers in the industry, and is also an environmental nightmare:
In “Fashionopolis,” Dana Thomas, a veteran style writer, convincingly connects our fast-fashion wardrobes to global economic and climate patterns and crises, rooting the current state of the fashion biosphere as a whole — production methods, labor practices and environmental impacts — in the history of the garment industry.Instead of looking into such issues big and small, morons and their moronic leaders instead believe that population growth is the greatest threat to sustainability, and that abortion is therefore critical for controlling population growth in poorer countries!
The industry manipulates us, and we consumers eagerly and merrily respond:
Fashionopolis lays blame squarely at the industry's door. At no point does Thomas shame consumers. But she does ask us to change our ways. As a nation, she writes, Americans sent 14 million tons of clothing to landfills in 2018, while shopping at a feverish pace. This "fashion bulimia" is enabled by fast fashion companies. In turn, it encourages their social and environmental malpractice.If this is what being "developed" means!
The problem looks to worsen than ever before. It is on an Amazon scale now. I mean, literally.
Amazon introduced in June 2018 a gadget called Echo Look: a hands-free camera and artificial intelligence personal stylist, retailing for $199. It’s like having your own Mews sales assistant, but at home. Echo Look connects to Amazon’s virtual assistant, Alexa; takes full- length pictures or six-second videos of you in your clothes; and builds a library of looks, which you can sort by season, style, color, or dressiness. The Style Check feature compares images of you in different outfits— like those “Who Wore It Better” magazine features— and tells you, on the screen, with the side‑by‑side shots, what’s working, and what’s not, sans the snark. “Fit looks better.” “The shape of the outfit works better.” “Colors look better on you.”With my height and build, and with a balding head and grey hair, and a face that can't ever smile, I know well that clothes don't make a man. We are ugly, and we are proud! Maybe I should consider moving to Germany
2 comments:
May be the democratization of consumption was a bad thing after all. Why consume for the sake of it? We consume, then regret that we have too much - and when we cut back we decry the state of the economy. India's car sales have declined 40%. Ecologically a good thing but some 49 million people are likely to go out of work. No easy answers
There are a few ways in which I would respond to your thoughts.
First, the equation of decreasing car sales with loss of employment. I would rather interpret this way: The hundreds of thousands (or lakhs) of rupees that would have been spent on cars will now be spent on other things, which will generate employment. The "loss" is primarily for those who invested in automobile manufacturing. I have no sympathies for those big investors, who know all too well about the market and profit and loss.
Second, some of us have been hypothesizing that in highly densely populated cities--which is all of India--the cost of car ownership is immense. Car sharing, which has been made possible by the likes of Uber and Ola and others, makes it possible for the upper-middle class to move around in cars without owning them.
Third, yes, this is wonderful news for India's natural environment. Transportation is one awful and significant source of carbon emissions. (Here in Oregon, it is a leading source, given that a good chunk of our electricity is from hydro.) 15 years ago, when my parents were in their previous place in Anna Nagar in Chennai, their home was right on the main road and the black soot from the traffic could not be cleaned away. And worse, the soot was causing severe respiratory problems for my mother. After they moved to another part of the city, to a place that was sheltered from intense traffic, my mother's respiratory problems vanished, almost instantaneously.
Which leads me to point out that the GDP to which the auto industry contributes does not account for the negative impacts. GDP has no place for people's ill-heath caused by the economic activities, or for the impacts on the flora and fauna, ...
But, all these that we are talking about is not anything new. For instance, 50 years ago, JK Galbraith (familiar to Indians as JFK's ambassador to the country) wrote about these in books like "The Affluent Society." Galbraith warned about private affluence versus public squalor. "One cannot defend production as satisfying wants if that production creates the wants” he wrote. Galbraith was not anti-market or anti-consumption. But, he wanted the capitalist forces to be guided by better morals. Galbraith argued that a system that systematically creates the demand/wants in us is ultimately unsustainable and immoral. Of course, I am paraphrasing him here.
There are " no easy answers" only because the question is framed thus ;)
Post a Comment