I eat meat and genuinely enjoy every minute of me.. eating meat. But it's frankly something I cannot rationalize and that upsets me.. I naturally like animals who don't look like me way more than the animals who do look like me so.. why do I eat the ones I like, right? you might as well eat a co-worker you detest
.. so.. it's complicated, and no amount of guilt-tripping or praise ('good for you eating meat, f*ck people who shame you!') is going to help me, I'm on a trip of my own haha
I am lucky enough to be the kind of person that can happily live without meat for a long time.. I grew up eating a
ton of veggies in a place where thankfully everything grows, so it's not like a radical change of lifestyle or any sacrifice, just.. no meat in the freezer means you'll cook with something else, pretty simple and no, I'm not 'hungry' later because I do know how to cook.
Anyway, I like H&M, esp their nail polish. Zara's good for basics and they last for a long time. I think I'm good tolerating snobbery but there's a certain amount, when people let their inner classicism and social climbing thirst flourish, when being dismissive towards clothing stores just feels so... pathetic, and shameful, and while I try to give them the benefit of the doubt, I always go back to thinking it's a mindset that pollutes society in a very different way than carbon emissions, but ultimately worse since it's words and behavior directly impacting those around you just for having different life conditions and being able to access things you, for no good reason really, consider 'beneath' you, cause it's certainly not 'beneath' others and whatever criticism is
not for their own benefit.
I did watch a documentary on these stores (H&M, Zara) a few days ago on Deutsche Welle.. nothing new but one thing that got my attention and it's usually something that comes up in these stories and then debates but almost as a
consequence of these companies and not the other way around, is the reckless type of consumerism people practice.
They were talking about how the average German buys around 26 kgs of clothing annually, only ends up wearing about 40% (or some crazy percentage like that) and naturally discards a ton, which ends up in countries like Romania and Bulgaria, where people will buy used clothes instead of firewood because it's cheaper, and these clothes have a lot of plastic particles so next thing you know, it smells like burned plastic, and it pollutes, etc. My question is: WHY are people buying 26 kgs of clothing per year?!
(I'm sure the number is worse in the US).. I've never weighed my clothes but that sounds like a two coats, three pairs of jeans (or something heavy like that) plus.. 20 new tops? just trying to eyeball this
. I doubt the quality is any factor on this (unless people use their clothes as napkins or for cleaning tables, most things.. last quite a bit?), I'm sure that if they had disposable income for shopping luxury labels at the same rate, they would do it. I think it's related to the value we place on image, on how important it is that we come off as people who are 'synched' with the times or know 'what's cool', and of course the kick we get out of 'newness', and how repetitiveness seems like a symbol of losing purpose and status. These stores, through affordability, simple
facilitate a problem that runs much deeper.
I still happen to remember the days
before these stores were within my reach or the reach of my friends and I remember there were always girls who had A TON of clothes, all one-time charm type of s*it, and it was seen as admirable.. any criticism was immediately filed as 'jealousy'. Given the chance, I think everyone would've tried to amass a similar amount of clothes and now they can.
In short, I think the behavior towards shopping is a much bigger problem that would remain with or without H&M or Zara. Will putting alcohol in the house of an alcoholic exacerbate a problem? yes, but that doesn't change the root of the problem. This type of consumerism can be seen in the way people do groceries as well, not in quantity (and simply because they lack the Kardashian's 4 fridges and 12 shelves, I promise you!
), but definitely in the way people quickly jump into trends and
must eat that now. Not saying these stores are
not ruthless companies who operate under despicable conditions, but I think blaming them exclusively for a larger problem is misguided and it liberates people from the responsibility of learning about the type of rampant capitalism we're all in now and that we can't stop unless the gigantic companies (oil, etc) do it or at least let go of the grip they have on media, which is what ultimately dictates what's aspirational and what's laughable and antisocial.
