America, The Beautiful

Until 2016, whoever was handling PR for the United States was at the top of their game. In our relatively short history, we somehow became regarded as a global superpower, at the forefront of social progress and the pinnacle of representative democracy. The U.S.’s well-documented history of systematically dehumanizing and murdering Black and Indigenous people was expertly glossed over, to the point that other economically developed countries learned to admire our “melting pot” narrative, disingenuous as it was. Even while our economy was collapsing under trillions of dollars in debt, the world perceived the U.S. as a land of endless economic opportunity.

Then Donald Trump was elected president, and the U.S. was exposed for what we truly were, despite centuries of careful attempts at rebranding—a hot mess in a fake Gucci belt.

Now, more than ever, when the basic human rights to bodily autonomy and privacy are no longer under federal protection for over half the population, it would behoove every American citizen to examine the impact of individual responsibility—to themselves, their partners, their communities, their country, and the planet. (And no, I don’t just mean voting. We did vote, remember? Voters came out in record numbers for the Democrats during the Presidential and midterm elections. Roe v. Wade was still overturned. I’m referring also to the individual responsibility of the elected officials to do the job they were elected to do.) Clearly, relying on the federal government to legislate morality is a mistake, and if you needed a creepy, Handmaid’s Tale-esque reminder of that, you got it.

The Supreme Court, in a stunningly hypocritical display of irony, decided to actively undermine humanity’s moral responsibility to preserve the natural environment into which we’re forcing unwanted babies by limiting the EPA’s ability to enact strategies for regulating the U.S.’s emissions. Apparently, we’re pro-pollution and anti-human rights. (It’s almost as if we were those things from the very beginning, and never actually were that liberally minded paragon of progress…)

So anyway, we remain in the Bad Timeline/Parallel Universe that Trump’s election created, and we’re here to stay. What does any of this have to do with ethical fashion, you ask? Aside from the fact that we should start making red Tencell Handmaid’s robes now so that when the violent theocracy officially takes control, we won’t all have to spend the whole day churning butter in itchy polyester? Well, we need to understand that the American approach to fast fashion is uniquely harmful to the environment, and that SCOTUS’s recent rulings are not only extraordinarily damaging to individuals in the short-term, but also detrimental to the fate of our entire species in the long-term.

Here are some not-so-fun facts about Americans and fashion toxicity:

1. In the U.S., around 85% of discarded garments end up incinerated or rotting in a landfill until the Rapture (which, hopefully, will be soon).

2. The average American discards about 81 pounds worth of clothing each year. For my metric friends, that’s about five Pugs’ worth of clothes.

Multiply this by 5 and that’s a whole lot of Shein in the trash.

3. This amounts to around 16 million TONS of textile waste—from just the U.S.—each year. I don’t know how many Pugs are equivalent to that amount, but I bet it’s a lot.

4. While the U.S. is no world leader when it comes to reproductive rights, we are top-notch at landfills. In fact, our landfills are our third largest source of methane emissions, after bovine farts en masse (also known as factory farming) and poisonous capitalism (also known as industry).

5. Shein, the Earthly embodiment of pure evil, is now the most downloaded e-commerce app in the U.S.

So what do we do about any of this? Well, start by deleting your Shein app. I promise, you don’t need that $2 crop top. It won’t cure your depression. Next, as stated elsewhere, if you have to shop for clothes, PLEASE shop second-hand. When you’re ready to terminate your relationship with an item of clothing, don’t throw it in the garbage (as much as it may feel like the garbage is the natural habitat of Shein products); instead, repurpose, up-cycle, donate (responsibly), or re-home it to a trusted acquaintance through a clothing swap. Think about reducing your personal annual textile waste from five Pugs to two Pugs (and then, eventually, zero to one-half Pugs). Just like in any crisis, all you can do is your personal best, and try to encourage others to do the same—with the understanding that many others simply don’t care about the collective best interest or the health of their communities.

And don’t let the bastards grind you down.