#if one more person tells me they're poor.... babes I literally quit FF when I was unemployed what now

[poetlcs]

I’ve quite literally never seen a critique of fast fashion, particularly shein, get anywhere because it immediately gets bombarded with “not all people can afford” “don’t shame people who-” “it’s classist to say...” and it’s fucking FRUSTRATING. Anyone whose educated enough about how the fashion industry runs KNOWS that already. If they didn’t, they do - due to the fact its the only discourse that ever, EVER gets brought up when someone dares to critique a billion dollar company like shein (as if their target customer isn’t someone wealthy and not a poor person buying 1 shirt a year), they know now. Like every fast fashion critique immediately becomes a “poor western people” discussion immediately making it the dominant discourse in any fast fashion critique. 

I’m actually so sick of seeing fast fashion critique get derailed at every opportunity. Maybe some people have good intentions, but I really think half these people just want a way to deflect their guilt by masking it in moral/virtue signalling arguments. 

Like, fucking ironic you always see “but don’t forget people are poor :(” as if a critique on FF isn’t inherently about protecting the poor and exploited. NEWSFLASH! The consumer in the west is NOT the poor person in this discussion. “it’s so classist to say I shouldn’t buy from shein :(” as if it isn’t also classist to render the garment worker invisible in this discussion. Like they are literally SO invisible it doesn’t even occur to people to consider their relative wealth and privilege that they can go out and buy these items... a shein worker literally would need to work weeks to months to afford a shein item themselves. 

I’ve seen these convos happen over and over and over without making any progress and it’s honestly kind of disgusting. People really need to stop deflecting critique every time they mildly cop it and attempting to derail every conversation about how the fashion industry relies on brutal exploitation of workers. It’s like no one can take personal responsibility or even REFLECT on their choices without immediately starting to defend themselves under the guide of “”poor people””. I think is telling of how people really don’t want to admit that their actions directly impact the world and they feel too inconvenienced to reckon with that in any real way. I also find it alarming how many “feminists” refuse to engage with this even though garment worker abuse IS a feminist issue due to the vast majority of garment workers being women. 

Finally - “don’t shame people who buy from fast fashion”... but it IS shameful. it may not be your fault, you may not have another choice genuinely.. that doesn’t mean it isn’t shameful. Because really all people critiquing fast fashion are critiquing a system of exploitation and abuse, and it’s shameful it exists and that we as western consumers created it and get to benefit from it. But people refuse to take discussing this issue as anything other than personal and thats why we will never, ever get anywhere. 

So maybe next time someone says something like “hey shein is bad” you could hold your “BUT BUT BUT” comments for one moment and actually think, seriously, about engaging with the topic and listening to what people have to say. idk