#It's very easy to blame this on streaming but it's hard to pinpoint why

[chronomally]

I'm rewatching The Birdcage and there's something about the like incisive satire of queer comedies from the '90s that are so thoroughly unconcerned with the feelings of cishet audiences

[sivellelavellan]

In Between

The rills on the mountainsides were cast deep and hungry, but were lifting slowly under the lavender fingertips of breaking dawn. Kadara’s gaping uncertainty of night became a blank canvas, newness rubbing its fingertips on the spherical foretelling of dew on on the chaparral. Kiasa’s breath came in puffs, visible and short in the cold. The exercise cleared the thickness in her chest, the haze of hangover that pounded in her temples. Her footfalls were pleasant and metronomic against the gravel, muscles straining against the uphill trek towards the peak.

Below her the newly clean streams were impossibly sapphire. Security was hard won in Heleus, and here on a planet determined to devour its prospective inhabitants, there was such unparalleled beauty. This would be a view like no other, even if it was a far cry from a settled home. The untamed fury of the badlands gave way to severe and exhilarated adventure, the vault seeming to hum and welcome her inexperienced fingertips. It was just the kind of recklessness she was addicted to, uncertainty settling in the pit of her stomach like fire.

She had to take it in with a birds-eye view.

She ducked away when she felt a hand ruffle her hair at the top of her head. Liam’s characteristic greeting had become a routine that she came to look forward to. It was something comforting, something counted-on even if it resulted in stray strands in her mouth and an exasperated laugh to push past her lips. Liam was huffing, an unamused knot settling between his brows as he rested his hands on his hips.

His glare was playfully reproving, “Why did I agree to this no jump jet rule?”

She rolled her eyes, “You didn’t have to come with me, but you insist on joining, you play by my rules.” She had thought that the early morning hours would let her slip away easily from the chaos of the newly-established Ditaeon settlement. It was an impulsive attempt to break away from responsibility for a few moments, and Liam had caught her in the act.

“Your rules are archaic.” he said, cupping his hands at the base of an out-of-reach ledge and nodding his head encouragingly towards it, “We have jump jets because we aren’t barbarians.”

She backtracked by three paces and ran towards him, stepping hard into his palms and feeling his lift boost her own momentum as she hooked her fingertips on the edge. With a few kicks she shoved her weight upwards and hauled herself onto the top. Peeking back over and extending a hand she smirked, “You could have just let me leave the outpost in peace, you know.”

“Yeah by yourself, before sunrise, on a planet full of criminals who will shoot on sight?” he shook his head vigorously, “Not a chance.”

She exhaled sharply, “I can handle myself, Kosta.”

“No question. This is more for my peace of mind.” he ran forward and jumped, grabbing her hand and then the ledge easily as she pulled him up, “But would you deprive yourself of my scintillating company?”

Helping him to his feet, she shrugged, “I could do with more complaining. Don’t let me down when we’re almost there.”

“Comin’ right up.” he held her hand for a heartbeat longer than necessary before letting go with a playful grin, “Are we there yet?”

She couldn’t help but laugh, and punched his shoulder exasperatedly. He nudged her back with a wide and genuine smile. That was the thing about Liam, he always seemed to mean it wholeheartedly when he smiled. He had a determined nonchalance that made him seem aloof at points, but he was the farthest from it. It was an earnestness that grabbed hold of her attention, an over-investment in every single deliberate decision he made. He had an easy smile. A gentleness that never left his eyes.

She was always grateful for his company. Sometimes she wondered if the hem of her shirt had snagged on his rougher edges and tugged her back towards him in kindred interest. She was reliant on him more than she liked to admit.

They walked side by side now, shoulders close enough to barely graze as the sky began to wash into a baby pink. He became unusually quiet in close proximity, looking at his feet, hands shoved into his pockets. She could see the tendons in his wrist straining and she knew he was clenching and unclenching his fists out-of-view.

She sighed, finally giving into the hovering words they were both avoiding, “I’m surprised you wanted to come.”

He kicked some loose rock in their path, “I know. I am too.”

She looked over at him, the troubled color in his cheeks causing a warmth to rise to her own, “You know my mom told me never to go to bed angry at someone.”

He shook his head, “Funny… I don’t think we were angry. We were—  something.”

“We were shouting, Liam.” she said quietly, more to the increasingly bright horizon line than to him.

He was resolute, “Not the angry kind.”

She searched his face for malice— or blame, but only found a meaningful sincerity that always tightened her chest. She had staggered into the long hallway towards her quarters the night before and found him sitting outside her door, head leaning against the bulkhead with a desperate worry drawn tight along his jawline. She remembered shame, and then frustration when he didn’t say anything, but stood up and offered his arm for her to lean on. Her refusal was met with harshness, with words that reverberated in the midnight stillness.

“Okay then what kind?”

“Straight up, Kia? I know I was scared”, he quickened his pace and and pulled just far enough ahead that his back was now to her, “And I sure as hell put my money on you feeling that way too.” They rounded the corner and he stopped short.

She jogged forward and placed a firm hand on his shoulder. She could feel him breathing hard by the subtle rise and fall of her palm, the bit of exposed skin by his neck under the collar of his T-shirt, hot. They were standing at the peak, dawn beginning to illuminate the valley below in a blazing orange.

She tugged gently to turn him to face her, “Do you really want to do this?”

He offered a small smile, “Honestly? Yes. But I’m worried I’m going to hate the answer.”

She could already feel her face burning, new daylight only accenting the flush that always gave away her emotions, “Reyes was familiar.”

He immediately scowled, “That’s your opening line? That doesn’t make me feel better.”

“It’s not meant to, Liam— it was the truth.” she lifted her hands up and gestured nonspecifically, trying to somehow grab hold of what an entire life of impermanence had done to shape her, “My peacekeeping squad meant we were never in one place for very long. Always on a new dig. Always chasing the next big find. I was barely twenty.”

He snorted, “A gun in your hands and a lover in every port then?”

She crossed her arms over her chest, “Are you seriously quoting Blasto at me?”

A beaming grin broke across his face, “That you knew where that line came from means, yes, of course I am.”

“You’re something else, you know that, Kosta?” she was unable to help but smile in return.

He shrugged and walked to the cliff’s edge that marked the steep drop-off to the valley below and sat down. He pat the ground beside him, motioning for her to join. She knew the joking was not out of discomfort, nor was it rooted in cheapening her perspective. It was just— his way. She had made it abundantly clear to him early on that her bid for Andromeda was to move on, to leave behind her mother’s death, to anchor her wanderlust to a more meaningful purpose. Really focusing on her past now felt— important, but she needed encouragement. And as she settled beside him, ankles knocking together as they dangled in limbo, she found the solidarity she needed with his arm pressed against hers.

“I was— am a restless person. I thought adventure was easiest with no ties.” she met his eyes, “I wasn’t lonely. I was always looking for the edge of something new. I get that from my dad. But I don’t lead people on. There was always mutual agreement that a relationship was casual. And if one of us started to feel different, I would make sure there was closure so imbalance didn’t end up in some lasting hurt.”

He paused and appeared thoughtful for a moment, “Was there ever anything real?”

“Sometimes, it felt like it. But I’d have to get up and move.” she felt it tumble out, but was unable to pinpoint the memory of a specific face or a name, “Ties would get cut. Being planets away was hard.”

Liam was kneading his thumb into his palm, “Why spefically Reyes then? He just seems so— obviously skeevy. And you were pretty loudly defensive about it last night.”

She frowned, “There was nothing specific about Reyes at all. He was fun. Drinking on the roofs of the Kadara market felt like Milky Way stuff. It’s hypocritical when I kept saying Andromeda was this desperate chance to move on.” She felt her stomach clench, “But Scott’s out, Dad’s gone — not like this. I didn’t want to start over like this. So, I wanted to feel something grounded and easy. Reyes was easy.”

He placed his hand over the back of hers, curling his fingers around her palm and gently stroking her knuckles with his thumb, “I guess I get that.”

She wrapped her fingers around his, “If you’d said something before last night, there wouldn’t have been a chance — “

“Okay. I’m saying it now. It hurt.”

“I genuinely didn’t know.” she couldn’t look at him, “You said ‘one night was one night’.”

He pulled back and raised his hand to her temple, tucking strands of hair behind her ear, “I know. And that was my bad. I wanted to play it cool… and then it all of a sudden it wasn’t, y’know. The kind that blindsides a person. I wasn’t out to have a row with you— but you come back drunk after missing for hours and smelling like sex. It felt sharp.”

She leaned into his touch, “And yet you still got me to bed and pulled my shoes off. Ever the gentleman.”

“Your feet stunk.” he crinkled his nose.

She huffed, “I almost had a heart attack when I tripped over you after I woke up to leave… because you stayed.” She couldn’t hide the humiliated affection that swept into the words, “You slept on the floor.”

She squeezed her eyes shut and bit her lip. She had gone to bed angry and somehow he was still there when she woke up to run away into the mountains. His eyes were exhausted and unsure but he smiled that unquestionably genuine smile when he saw her. Sat up. Asked to come along without expectation. Even after the hurt and the haze of alcohol left their argument dangling like tinder between them.

His reply was quiet, “I know.”

“Reyes and I are done. Nothing but business.” she said firmly.

“Yeah? Pity for your security specialist getting in too deep?”, he sounded bitter.

She opened her eyes and met his with as much sincerity as she could muster, “”You think you’re the one that’s in too deep?“

She saw something close to relief wash across his face, “No miscommunication then, Kia. I’m all in here.”

The silence settled around them. The sunrise was well underway and for a moment their understanding felt solid. Like a sentence that drifted out without any necessary punctuation. He leaned in, his hand drifting to cup the back of her neck, and rested his forehead against hers carefully with a weighted breath. The tips of their noses barely grazing. The rise and fall of their chests synced. His eyelids fluttered closed and the smallest tug of his lips accompanied a contented sigh.

“You know why I said no jump jets?” she murmured.

“Hm?”

“Scott and I started to go hiking— old-fashioned, ten mile sunrise treks when Mom got really bad.” she lifted her fingertips to rest lightly on his cheeks, “This view, this constancy in knowing the sun’s coming up despite everything, you know, falling apart.”

The dome of the rising sun cut a blinding vibrancy into a watercolor sky and she was unable to stop the thought in its tracks, “You’re here and that’s what this feels like. Galaxies away. This is real.”

His eyes snapped open and there was something depthless about his expression, “Can I kiss you right now?”

She smiled and pressed her lips to his. Vulnerable. He kissed her back with a soft desperation, with a toe-curling intent. The first time it was frenzied. This time it was secure, and safe. Her arms wound around his neck. He wrapped his around her waist and pressed her flush against him.

He pulled back and then pressed a gentle kiss to her forehead. She buried her face in the crook of his neck.

She finally relented, “I yelled because I just know how much I didn’t want you to walk. And yeah I was scared because I fucked up and you were going to tell me you wouldn’t want to have our weekly beer.”

She felt the laugh rumble over his chest, “Nah, the beers are never out of the question.”

“Hah. Even when you’re pissed at me you wouldn’t pass up a— what was it?” she leaned back and raised her eyebrows.

“A sanity check.” he said, “To preempt Lexi’s therapeutic probing.”

He let her go and said nothing as he studied her.

“What?”

He smirked, “You don’t get your sense of wanderlust from your dad. I think you just genuinely love being out here and making an impact. S’what I really liked about you when we got stranded on Habitat 7.”

She laughed, “I want to leave something good behind even if I keep moving.” She spread her arms wide, and threw her head back letting the new sun warm her arms and neck.

Liam tilted his head to the side slightly, “What if something good can keep up?”

She really looked at him. His wide and trusting eyes. How he played with his hands when he felt vulnerable.

She quickly shoved to her feet, and began jogging back down the path they came from “Well then I’ll race you down the mountain!”

She heard him groan, “I got nothin’ to prove, Ryder!”

Her cheeks were cold with the wind that brushed past as she picked up speed. “Last one down gets to buy the beers!”

[vedantaboston]

"What's the Point?"

Hungarian-born, New York-based financier George Soros, 89, pinpoints a day in 1979 when, walking along a London street, he suddenly felt a hammering in his chest and feared he was having a heart attack. That was the moment when he said to himself, “What’s the point?” Soros took personal stock: his investment fund at that time had reached $100 million in assets, and his individual worth was $30 million (in 2017 his net worth was estimated to be more than $25 billion). “I felt I had made enough money for my personal needs,” he said, and he decided to direct some of his bounty into a philanthropy.

I read this 25 years ago in a Time magazine profile (July 10, 1995). What struck me then, and what has stuck in my mind to this day, is not so much the vastness of Soros’s wealth and the abundance of his philanthropy but this simple question: “What’s the point?” It’s a question I ask myself often. The frequency of asking myself, “What’s the point?” has increased with age. Every moment in this world someone is born somewhere while someone else dies. We don’t even think about this. But death becomes a headline during a pandemic, making the question “What’s the point?” even more urgent.

When common people like you and me read features such as the one on George Soros and other billionaires-turned-philanthropists, how do we react? A few reactions are predictable. For instance, it is natural that most will admire such people and appreciate their spirit of service. Those with financially strapped projects on hand may want to get in touch with them. Mean, stingy people may be horrified at what they might see as the thoughtless extravagance of the super rich and predict that they will repent later. Some fantasists are likely to sigh and say, “If I had such big bucks, I too could have given them away.”

Every reaction tells us something about the person who is reacting. Our words and actions invariably give us away, no matter how hard we may try to project ourselves differently. It is easier to be ourselves than to appear to be what we want others to take us to be. Alas, we waste most of our energy trying to change our exterior. With only a fraction of that energy, it is possible to make our interior more beautiful.

Let’s go back to the question that started Soros’s philanthropic career: “What’s the point?” Almost the first thing we realize is that it is not impossible for our own hearts to start beating erratically at any moment. Death is a natural process. What is unnatural is living, and we manage to live for years at a stretch. Listen to this ancient verse:

मरणं प्रकृति: शरीरिणां विकृति: जीवितमुच्यते बुधै: ।

क्षणमप्यवतिष्ठते श्वसन् यदि जन्तुर्ननु लाभवानसौ ॥

Maraṇaṁ prakṛtiḥ śarīriṇāṁ vikṛtiḥ jīvitam ucyate budhaiḥ

Kṣaṇam api-avatiṣṭhate śvasan yadi jantur-nanu lābhavān asau.

“The wise say that it is natural for people to die and unnatural for them to live. If a person manages to live even for a moment, they should consider themselves fortunate.”

Vedanta teachers give the example of a jar filled with water. Suppose holes are punched into it from all sides. Should we be surprised if the water drains out? But let us suppose we find water not draining out. Now, that would be unnatural. So these teachers say, here is this body-jar filled with life-water (prāņa). Isn’t it altogether amazing that life manages to remain inside the body for years together in spite of several available exits? Fortunate, indeed, is a person who can live even for a moment!

Every one of us is a walking, breathing miracle of life. Our misfortune is that we don’t feel ourselves to be fortunate when we are living. On their deathbed people are ready to spend a fortune to be able to survive a little longer. We understand the blessing of being alive only when we are faced with the imminent prospect of death. It is only then that most of us—and a few, not even then—begin to question the value of our life’s achievements.

Something like that seems to have happened to George Soros, which brought forth the question “What’s the point?” As it turned out, the death-scare that Soros got was only a false alarm. But it had done its job of awakening this man and directing his life’s energies into a more fruitful, meaningful and fulfilling channel. While it would have been easy to forget one erratic heartbeat, Soros chose to remember it—fortunately for him and fortunately for the millions of his beneficiaries.

What about your and my heartbeats? Is it necessary for us to wait until we get some ominous signals in some unexpected way at some unexpected time? By then it might be too late to pull through. Why not begin the preparation now, this very moment, when things don’t appear so bad? We must proceed along two fronts: one, learning how to be ready for the inevitable event called death; and two, ceaselessly remaining conscious of the blessing of being alive.

At first sight, the two—life and death—appear to be different from each other, but they are not really different. They are just two sides of the same coin. If we know how to die, we’ll automatically know how to live, and vice versa. But because of our inborn dread of anything connected with death, how-to-live discussions seem to be more pleasant than how-to-die discussions. No discussion on life, however, can be complete without reference to death, just as no discussion on death can be complete without reference to life.

It is possible to see life as a period spanning two deaths—the death of my previous body in my last birth and the upcoming death of the present body in this birth. What we do within this intervening period determines the course of our future existence. What we are experiencing now has been determined already by what we did in the past. This is the theory of karma. It is neither fate nor God’s will. Karma simply means being accountable to myself. I don’t have to search for scapegoats for my follies or blame others for my woes. I just have to recognize and accept my own responsibility in being what I am and doing what I do.

Responsibility goes hand in hand with awareness. If I’m responsible for something or someone, I must be aware that I am responsible. Else how will I—and why should I—willingly employ my time and energy in that direction? I am responsible for my own life, my present and my future. When I keep my awareness shining brightly on this important truth, I know what I must do in order to attain my goals.

Goals we all have, but not all of us have cared to examine them mindfully. If we do that, keeping our own prejudices and pet ideas aside, we shall discover that quite a number of our so-called goals are no great shakes. Not only are they worthless, they are also a needless drag on our time and energy. Instead of making us more free, more happy, more peaceful, they bind us, they create new anxieties in us, they disturb our inner harmony. When we find this during our sane moments, we must have the courage and wisdom to abandon these goals.

Many of our goals start out as the means to some other goal and at some stage they get promoted to being goals in their own right. Then the mischief starts. Take, for instance, the desire for happiness, security, stability—a perfectly understandable, agreeable desire. To fulfill this desire I need money. This too, let us assume, is OK. Money is thus the means. Then I start on my money-making spree. So long as I remember that money is the means, I am safe.

But it is not easy to remember this always, because we find that most of us forget this often. Money suddenly becomes the goal and ceases to be the means. People sacrifice their existing happiness, security, stability—to get more of which was their goal, remember—and run madly after money. This often leaves them with precious little time to spend time with their family, or to play, or to read books, or to do gardening, or to saunter along a stream or in a park. There is no longer any time for such things. 

Time is money in this bustling, hurried world of today. So time should not be “wasted.” We are so busy with our careers and with making money that we ignore the happiness which is already available. We know, of course, that a bird in hand is worth two in the bush, but we are so taken with those two, that the bird in hand flies away. When shall we, oh when shall we, realize that our present happiness is infinitely more precious than some future happiness which may never come.

The problem is that “future” happiness can never be experienced. What is experienced is always “present” happiness. Life can be lived only in the present moment. The past has already gone, the future is not yet here. If we don’t develop the capacity to identify and experience our present happiness, we shall totally miss the future happiness when it finally arrives and becomes the present.

The same thing applies to our desire for stability and security. We already have these to some extent and we want to strengthen these. That’s fine. But we go about doing this by undermining or ignoring our existing stability and security, while dreaming of some special kind of future stability. That’s crazy. Again, no one knows what’s in store in the future. Here is the present—right now, right here. If I value the present and deal with it intelligently, the future will take care of itself. If I want to be happy in the future, I must learn to be happy in the present. There is no other way.

Back in 1980s when I was in our Delhi monastery, we had a kitchen-assistant named Lal Singh. This young man, who was in his early twenties, hailed from the Garhwal region in the foothills of the Himalayas. Hardworking and somewhat clownish, Lal Singh was loved by all. He received a decent salary and could have, within his means, lived happily. But he wanted to get rich—and do it quickly. So he bought lottery tickets every month, not one or two, which would have been all right, but many tickets, exhausting sometimes more than half of his salary. Until the results were out in the papers, he would be then on tenterhooks.

Most of the time he drew a blank. On some occasions he won a few minor prizes, more or less recovering the money he had spent that month. It was customary for him to approach some young monastic with a request to check from the newspaper whether he had won anything. As the swami or brahmachari scanned the numbers, the expression on Lal Singh’s face was worth seeing: hope, anxiety and, when the news was bad, the inevitable dismay.

Once Lal Singh won ₹500; he was on cloud nine. He had already decided what to do with this windfall. His reasoning was simplistic: if I got 500 today, I’m certain to get 500,000 tomorrow. That is how we found him the following month coming with 500 lottery tickets and a newspaper: “Maharaj, could you please check these for me?” Not even one of those 500 tickets proved lucky. Lal Singh nearly wept. We thought this blow would wean him away from his addiction to lottery. But no. Next month he had again a bunch of tickets in his hand, and hope and anxiety on his face.

Poor Lal Singh! He could have had enough happiness, security and stability, if he had tried to live within his means and been reasonable about improving his lot. But his dream of some kind of super happiness, super security, and super stability made him close his eyes to the happiness, security and stability already available to him. He lost the bird in hand and never managed to lay his hands on the two in the bush.

At least a little bit of Lal Singh lives in all of us. So we have to be careful. How do we go about exercising care? The method is simple enough, provided we are simple ourselves. All we have to do is find a quiet corner, stop the roving mind from fishing in the troubled waters of the past and the future, and bring it to a stop in the cool, steady, still pool of the present—and ask this question: “What’s the point?”

When I am not sure whether I should do something, I can ask myself: Is it really worthwhile to do what I am doing? Is what I am doing now connected with what I want to achieve? Is there a better way to do it than how I’m doing it now? Questions like these are implied in that simple “What’s the point?” The more often we ask this question to ourselves, the more of our useless, unexamined, even self-destructive, pursuits we shall be able to get rid of. In addition, this will make us more goal-oriented, transforming our life into a more purposeful, joyful and speedy journey towards freedom and fulfillment.

Life is not just any journey, it is a pilgrimage. People around us are fellow pilgrims. Service really means sharing. We may not be billionaires (yet), but even without that it is possible to share with others what little we have. It doesn’t always have to be money. It could be a little of our time or energy or talents or possessions—used in service of those around us without expecting anything in return. At the least, a few kind words or a smile. If even this is too difficult, goodness gracious!—then what’s the point?

“What’s the point?” is another way of asking the question: “Why?” Read more about it here.

[deniscollins]

To Avoid More Racist Hoodies, Retailers Seek Diversity

Heineken televised a series of commercials for light beer with the tagline “sometimes, lighter is better.” If you were a Heineken executive, what would you do if some people complained that the ad was racist: (1) withdraw the commercials or (2) continue to show the commercials? Why? What are the ethics underlying your decision? 

On Monday, Heineken pulled a series of commercials for light beer with the tagline “sometimes, lighter is better,” after an ad sparked criticism for being racist.

Every once in a while, tucked into the stream of speedily made garments rushed into stores, designs with shockingly bad taste stand out: a shirt comparing women to dogs at Topman, symbols of the Holocaust on a top at Zara, a slogan that trivializes sexual consent on a piece at Forever 21, or words like “slave” and “slut” used as decorative details on T-shirts at ASOS and Missguided.

Brands, even as they offer mea culpas, rarely explain how such blunders come to pass. But problematic designs seem to repeatedly slip past layers of buyers, designers, stylists, marketers and managers before being caught by consumers.

Retail experts blame a heated competitive environment, where companies, many of them based in Europe, are spread thin trying to cater to a global customer base that is easily bored, is extremely demanding and can buy almost anything via e-commerce. Many brands develop a cavalier attitude: Churn out products now, ask forgiveness later.

The problem is not limited to fashion. On Monday, Heineken pulled a series of commercials for light beer with the tagline “sometimes, lighter is better,” after an ad sparked criticism for being racist.

With easy access to social media, shoppers are increasingly aware of — and vocal about — cultural appropriation, derogatory messaging and insensitive references. In response, several retailers say that they are beefing up the approval process for designs and investing in digital screening technologies.

Still, distasteful designs will probably continue sneaking onto store shelves. Industry experts said cultural-awareness training and virtual sampling techniques that run spot checks on products can only go so far in a business marked by fast-shifting trends and high employee turnover.

Earlier this year, H&M, one of the largest clothing retailers in the world and a repeat offender, was taken to task over a children’s hoodie emblazoned with the phrase “coolest monkey in the jungle” and modeled in marketing materials by a young black boy. The description, which has been used to dehumanize black people, set off protests at South African stores that left mannequins toppled and racks overturned.

In the aftermath, H&M chose a lawyer and company insider, Annie Wu, to lead a new four-person team at its Stockholm headquarters focused on global diversity and inclusiveness.

“We want to be held accountable,” she said this week in her first interview since taking the job.

“We didn’t recognize that in this now new age of transparency,” she added, “what the brand stands for is super important to people.”

Lost in Translation

Fast fashion companies, which specialize in low-priced, quickly produced clothing and have grown faster than the apparel industry as a whole for years, are under pressure to be more prolific and provocative as they sell across more borders.

H&M, which added 479 stores last year, now has more than 4,000 stores in dozens of countries. Inditex, the enormous parent company behind Zara, has more than 7,500 stores in 94 countries.

Zara outsources a small fraction of its designs — just 2 percent of the 20,000 designs it produces each year — and all are sent through multiple reviews before being offered for sale. But some of the outsourced designs have proved problematic.

When fashion is contracted out, “there’s a lot less control, a lot less oversight and involvement from the company along every step of the process,” said Felipe Caro, a business professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has spent years studying Zara.

Last year, critics complained that images of frogs on a Zara skirt resembled a cartoon character called Pepe, which was designated a hate symbol of the alt-right by the Anti-Defamation League.

The skirt was designed by an independent Spanish artist, Mario de Santiago, who is based in London. In a statement at the time, he said that the frogs had “no connection at all with anything related to hate, violence or discrimination.”

Ricardo Cavolo, another artist who designed for the same collection, said in an email that the design process “was pretty fast.” He spent two days at Zara’s headquarters in Spain, creating paintings on denim that the company then reproduced without making any suggestions or changes, he said.

Supply chain experts urge more careful, decentralized vetting procedures that send designs through a central checkpoint at headquarters and also past gatekeepers in the country of sale.

Soon after shifting into her new role at H&M, Ms. Wu said, she visited South Africa, where the importance of soliciting local input quickly became clear.

“I thought I was very culturally aware,” said Ms. Wu, who was born in Taiwan, grew up in New York and speaks Mandarin. “I learned so much more just by being in that office.”

A Homogeneous Work Force

A few months ago, during a long day spent styling and photographing products for H&M’s website, no one on the Stockholm set appeared to raise concerns about one more item to process, the hoodie with the offensive message, according to a person familiar with the shoot.

Critics said the garment might have been flagged if H&M’s team was more diverse.

“It’s so easy to avoid this kind of controversy,” said Angel Sinclair, the founder of the advocacy group Models of Diversity. “If you care about being culturally sensitive, just be more culturally inclusive of talent and managers in the business.”

H&M has more than 100,000 workers worldwide. But the fashion giant’s board is entirely white. And retail experts said that much of the creative process takes place in and around its European home office, far from many of its markets.

Ms. Wu, who reports directly to H&M’s chief executive, Karl-Johan Persson, said she did not know the ethnic or racial backgrounds of the employees and contractors involved with the monkey hoodie. But an internal investigation of the incident — which she declined to discuss in detail — showed “how important awareness-raising is generally,” she said.

“There are hundreds of steps of getting a product to market — it’s never one point in time where we can say, ‘It’s your fault,’ because there are teams at work on things, there are approval processes throughout,” she said. “It’s really hard to pinpoint when.”

A Need for Speed

H&M and Zara used to stun the industry with their ability to move garments from design to store floor within weeks, when other retailers required more than half a year. But some brands can now perform the same feat much faster, while others, like Amazon and Adidas, are experimenting with on-demand manufacturing.

ASOS, an online fashion retailer, adds 4,500 new products to its website each week, according to a recent report from the Fung Global Retail & Technology research firm.

H&M, which has suffered a string of gloomy earnings reports and said this week that it is sitting on $4.3 billion in unsold goods, plans to invest in its supply chain to make it “faster, more flexible and more responsive.”

“This is a low-tech, low-profit, low-growth industry that is being turned upside down,” said John S. Thorbeck, an expert on retail supply chains. “Each of these companies would rather get something as rapidly to market as possible and retract a mistake.”

Prioritizing speed means fewer checks and balances, said Adheer Bahulkar, a retail expert at the consulting firm A. T. Kearney.

“When you have two hours to approve a line versus two months, things go unnoticed,” he said.

Bulwarks Against Bad Taste

Fast fashion has produced tone-deaf products for years, passing them off as a rounding error given the enormous volume of items the companies generate each year.

But more shoppers have begun calling on retailers to take a stand on social and political issues, such as sexism and gun control.

“These incidents are happening in a climate where marginalized communities are feeling more targeted, more under attack, so they’re more in tune with these issues,” said Melissa Garlick, a lawyer with the Anti-Defamation League. “Fashion companies have a responsibility to the public and to consumers to ensure that they’re being sensitive in designing and marketing products — they have to be aware of what lines not to cross.”

Several companies have pledged to diversify hiring, retool corporate guidelines and initiate other measures to prevent mistakes from going out the door.

Zara now uses an algorithm created to scan designs for insensitive or offensive features. In 2016, it hired a committee of diversity officers. Diversity and inclusion training has become mandatory for all new employees.

At H&M, Ms. Wu said she was organizing workshops to help employees recognize unconscious bias and was also reaching out to anti-racism groups and other organizations. In North America, H&M is planning to hire a New York-based diversity manager.

Ms. Wu’s first two months on the job have yielded commitment from executives but, so far, few specific measures. She acknowledged that raising awareness is not “the Band-Aid” that can fix all of H&M’s problems.

“We are a very large corporation, and mistakes do happen,” she said. “It starts with us scrutinizing all of these different processes.”