Blog Post 1
Better lives unit gives me a good opportunity to understand how sustainability, diversity, and social responsibility related to the fashion industry. As a SMC student, I know media is top priority in this industry. This unit makes me reflect on how media make better lives.
The unit gave us a lot of lectures and I really love the lecture Power by Julia Crew. It completely impressed me and made me think a lot about the fashion industry. This industry can not stand the ravages of war, strictly speaking, the ravages of the economy. Benefit from the global economy has stabilized, the fashion industry has been able to develop successfully. We pursuit our desire like beauty, money, and power. Then we create fashion, fashion has everything.
People consume 80 billion pieces of clothing a month, which is a 400% increase from years ago(2018). It causes a lot of anti-sustainable social issues. But not everyone is conscious of bad impacting on the environment and society. Due to ads and social media, we buy lots of fast fashion items. Not many people can afford luxury brands and fast fashion gets us satisfaction. Behind the fast fashion industry, a lot of clothing workers are suffering from labour issues. Every year G20 countries imports $127.7 billion worth of garments, and these garments maybe “help” aggravate the situation of modern slavery. There are still many sweatshops in the world, and most of these garment workers are women and children-especially adolescent girls and young women. They are working in awful working conditions for low wages. Some get ill by overwork, getting no money at the end. We really need to think twice before purchasing clothes. As consumers, we truly have the power to drive the trends. Modern slave is a big issue and one of the reasons is our desire as consumers. We need to change our minds from our hearts, do not put too much desire on fast fashion. Thinking about who makes our clothes and under what conditions. We should concern workers behind these brands and think if they have their equitable income. As a SMC student, media should become our weapon. It really controls people’s minds. Fashion media and ads are able to promote sustainable fashion. People check social media almost every day like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. They control people to buy more and more clothes. If more and more social media stand up calling for sustainable fashion, people may get influenced by that. Social media may lead sustainable fashion to a purchasing behavior which makes us proud and release. Fashion media still has a large room for improvement to make fashion better and lives better.
Global Slavery Index (2018) Modern slavery: A hidden, everyday problem. Available at: https://www.globalslaveryindex.org (Accessed:26 April, 2020)