I just laugh at white people who say that they get stared at and discriminated because of their tribal tattoos, ear gauges and their dreadlocs. You appropriating assholes choose to dress this way when PoC have these things in their cultures but they get called barbaric and savage for doing so.
(Source: faineemae)
I suspect that this would fall under “unpopular opinions” but, yes, I think you can be culturally appropriative of food. I’ve never heard/seen anyone talk about food specifically as being culturally appropriated, but I highly doubt that my thoughts on this subject are unique. I suspect I just haven’t seen some wonderful work done by others. Also, I am relying on the theories and work of others who talk about food justice, even if they haven’t actually connected it specifically to cultural appropriation. *Also remember: This is just my own opinion. There are people in marginalized and oppressed groups who may completely disagree with me.*
So let’s begin with what I *don’t* think constitutes cultural appropriation of food, to get some of the angsty stuff out of the way. I don’t believe it is cultural appropriation to
- eat food from another culture
- to learn how to cook food from another culture
- to modify recipes from another culture for your own enjoyment
- to eat at restaurants, authentic or otherwise, that serve food from another culture
- to enjoy learning about another culture thru the traditional and/or modern foods of that culture
So no, I don’t think you are a racist asshat because you love guacamole or pad thai. I don’t think you are a privileged douchefuck because you sweated to learn how to make a killer tagine that is now the centerpiece of your family’s holiday meals.
“What’s left?” you may ask. “I can eat what I want, cook what I want, share what I want… okay… then how dare you say that it is possible to appropriate food? Where are you going with this?”
When we talk about food justice we are talking about a few different things. What I will concentrate on here are:
- Access to the foods and ingredients that are meaningful, traditional, and wanted within our culture.
- Access to high quality and fresh foods and ingredients that are available to low income people in low income neighborhoods.
One way that food can be appropriated is by making it difficult for those of the culture from which it stems to gain access to it. For example, quinoa has become very popular outside its native home of Bolivia, but with that popularity comes a price to the Bolivian people that what was a staple of their diet is now too expensive for them to eat. It’s fair to assume that it will be replaced by less beneficial alternatives, most likely imported and pre-packaged. I’m not saying that everyone should throw out their quinoa or feel useless guilt for eating it. I am saying that it is a good example of where access to a traditional food has been appropriated by people in such a way as to make it inaccessible to the culture from which it comes. We can think about how much of it we eat, if there are more fair ways to get it, and look for ways to support policies and practices that help Bolivians to be able to make an income off of this seed while still maintaining their cultural practices and access to their own food.
Put another way for U.S.ians, can you imagine not being able to eat an apple or have your July 4th homemade apple pie because the government decided to export most of them, thereby raising the prices of the few available here? Sure, you might see some increase in your income, but it wouldn’t be enough to buy you those apples you once took for granted. And it wouldn’t be enough to help you to retain the centrality of the apple to your diet. Oh, but hey, apples are a pseudo-cultural marker of the U.S. (“American as apple pie”, Johnny Appleseed, “an apple a day keeps the doctor away”, etc.) but aren’t actually a staple for most of us anymore (though perhaps they should be).
Another way that I feel food can be appropriated is by fetishizing it, especially when it includes commercializing it. Privileged white people who visit an “exotic” country and learn all they can about the local cuisine, only to come home and write best-selling books, appear on Martha Stewart, and eventually parlay the experience into their own television deal are a good example of this. Haven’t you ever wondered why the food stations are so overwhelmingly pale even as “festive” and “steamy” meals from “far-away lands” are being cooked up using modern technology? How much of that money do you think makes it back into the hands of the people who generously shared their family recipes with the soon-to-be celebrity chef? When the “experts” of our food are people from outside our communities, that is a form of appropriation.
In a lot of ways food becomes the symbol of a culture. Take fry-bread for Natives. Who hasn’t heard a joke about fry-bread? Do I think it’s wrong for non-Natives to eat fry-bread? No, I don’t. But I do think it is wrong when non-Native dieticians etc. point to fry-bread to explain all the health ills of Natives. I also think it’s wrong when non-Natives refuse to acknowledge the painful history and creation of fry-bread, and the poverty and scarcity of other food that it also symbolizes. And it is wrong when Natives are reduced to “fry bread eating, commodity taking freeloaders”, just as it is wrong when Mexicans are reduced to “beaners”, Arabs to “goat grillers”, and South Asians to “smelly curry eaters”. When our traditional foods are pointed to as jokes or ways to further oppress us, to mark us out as different in a way that is mocked, that is not respectful.
Our traditional foods are central to our cultures too. For some of us there are a lot of memories around sharing those foods, and for many others of us the food was part of our journey back to our people and culture. An honest recognition of that by others is necessary to respect that food. There are also traditional times/occasions for certain foods, and taboos, that should be honored. You can share in our food, but there is still an element of privilege, theft, and imposed change that has to be acknowledged at the same time. Minimizing YOUR theft and imposed change, respecting the traditions that guide when and how that food is served, and being thoughtful of what the food represents for us is a good first step to genuine cultural understanding that moves past appropriation.
Lauren Scheiwe
They are using the same old tactics of assimilation, except this time they are trying to assimilate our culture into their world because it is fashionable in their eyes and will make money. …[W]e will survive these attempts to wipe out our peoples. … Just as our struggle for land is still strong, so is our fight to maintain and revive our culture, for our land and our culture are indivisible from our lives (Coleman, 2005: 2).
Cultural Appropriation can be said to occur when members of one culture take the cultural practices of another as their own, or as if the right of possession should not be questioned or contested (Hart, 1997:138). This essay aims, in theory and in practice, to explore the cultural appropriation of Indigenous culture by Western society, New Ageists and new age Pagans, with particular reference to Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and American Indian culture. To gain an understanding of how Indigenous culture has been borrowed by mainstream society, I will look at art, music and spirituality. I will also look at the disadvantages and benefits of cultural appropriation for both Indigenous and non-indigenous people and explore the notion of reconciling these differences.
In Aboriginal Art, Identity and Cultural Appropriation (Root, 2005:1), D. Scott Mundine is quoted as saying, “Having taken away the land, children and lives, the only thing left [to Aboriginal people] is identity through art and this is now being abused”. This is true, Indigenous Australians have suffered greatly at the hands of Western society and this is continuing as Indigenous people in Australia and the world are having their insignia, music, spirituality and cultural art used and adopted in ways they have never been consulted about nor agreed to. One example of this is in Japan, where boomerangs and didgeridoos can be seen for sale at many alternate lifestyle shops. They are cheap reproductions, made in China and Taiwan. It is the same in the souvenir shops on the main streets in Australian cities. Many Indigenous people see the use of their art as a continuation of colonisation. On this issue, Galarrauwary Yunupingu, a Yonglu man and land rights activist, states,Yolngu understand that the yidaki has become an Australian icon and accept that non-Yolngu people throughout the world use it for informal purposes and enjoyment. Be aware, however, that its origins are sacred and secret to Yolngu men. Those stories cannot be told here, can only be shared with initiated men. The yidaki is a male oriented instrument. In Yolngu society women are forbidden to play it, as its origins are sacred to men. (Nuenfeldt, 2006:39).
In Australia the dispossession of Aboriginal people from their land has touched every region of the country, although some more than others. Children were stolen from their parents and forced to assimilate into mainstream society, indigenous languages forbidden and the missionaries and governments of the colonials banned many traditional customs. As a result of these atrocities languages and culture have been lost. It is reasonable to understand how many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people feel about this history and that they want to prevent their culture being affected adversely by Western influence.
Music is a distinctive cultural practice of many of the world’s indigenous peoples. The success of Indigenous Australian bands and films across Australia and internationally has attracted attention and cultivated interest in the culture. Many non-indigenous people across the world have been inspired to buy instruments such as clap sticks and didgeridoos and desire to play them, purely for musical enjoyment and in some cases for spiritual practices. The question of whether it is appropriate or not is rarely addressed by these enthusiasts.
It is a widely held belief by non-indigenous Australia, that didgeridoo playing and making is strictly men’s business. If Indigenous women are not permitted to play the didgeridoo, then where does this place non-indigenous men and women who play the didgeridoo? Should they be permitted to play? Karl Neuenfeldt addresses this question in his article, The ongoing debate about women playing didgeridoo: how a musical icon can become an instrument of remembering and forgetting (2006: 41). He discusses how it is difficult to maintain if there is in fact taboo surrounding women and didgeridoo playing. Because Aboriginal Australians from regions where own their culture has been dramatically affected by colonisation have appropriated the didgeridoo. This appropriation has made it difficult to determine if there are taboos surrounding non-indigenous people playing it. In addressing this issue Manduwuy Yunupingu, lead vocalist of Yothu Yindi and brother of Galarruway Yunupingu states,Western worldview is based on a fundamental epistemological error that humans are separate from each other and from the natural world. The consequences of this are…ecological devastation, human and social fragmentation and spiritual impoverishment’ (Reason, P. 1993: 16).
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture is not homogeneous nor with American Indians. There are unique cultural practices throughout Indigenous Australia specific to clans and language groups. In Aboriginal Australia, it is forbidden in some groups for women to play the didgeridoo, but not in others. In the same way, some groups may not appreciate non-Indigenous people using aspects of their culture to better their own, and some are willing to share their culture with the outside world (Welch, 2002:31-33).
Didgeridoo workshops are not rare sightings at world music festivals, multi-cultural festivals and the like. There are also classes available in our cities and some regional towns. If these Indigenous people are willing to share their skills and talents with non-indigenous people then, is it culturally inappropriate? If one Indigenous person or small group deems it appropriate to share their culture with outsiders, it does not mean that all Indigenous groups would consider this appropriate or respectful. In fact the opposite is often the case. However, these workshops and other revenue raising ventures can be beneficial to communities as the money from workshops can play a significant role in self-determination. This has been the case for some Canadian Indian nations, by which money from casinos owned and operated by their people, has played a major role in the self-determination and has greatly improved the quality of life and life expectancy of those nations. The people of these nations have a better quality of life and live longer than non-Indigenous Canadians. Whilst it is important for Indigenous peoples everywhere to maintain control of their culture in relation to its appropriation into other cultures, self-determination, equality and health for indigenous peoples is also vital.
Westerners practicing new age Paganism and New Ageism have imitated the spirituality of Indigenous Australians and American Indians. Unfortunately indigenous people write few of the books readily available to new followers of indigenous spirituality, most are written by Western anthropologists and academics. American Indian sacred rituals such as, sweat lodges, sun dances and vision quests have been popularised by mainstream western culture and are sometimes being practised by Westernised natives who adapt the rituals to western standards (Welch, 2002:22-28). As a consequence of this, in June 1993, The Dakota, Lakota and Nakota Nations ratified the Declaration of War Against Exploiters of Lakota Spirituality. Addressing what they considered to be phoney and sacrilegious imitation practices such as sweat lodges, vision quests and sun dances, declaring them to promote systematic colonisation of their spirituality. The first of seven parts asserts, “We hereby and henceforth declare war against all persons who persist in exploiting, abusing, and misrepresenting the sacred traditions and spiritual practices of our Lakota, Dakota and Nakota people (Churchill, 1994:275)”.
The intention of those who practice new age Paganism and New Ageism is not to offend indigenous people, many genuinely believe that what they are involved in, in the way of cultural appropriation is not exploitative. There is so much available to them in terms of books, lectures and workshops, which supports their position, and despite the reactions of Indigenous peoples to the appropriation of their culture and spirituality there is so much to gain for the world as a whole in the acceptance and inclusion of Indigenous culture and practices into mainstream Western culture. Reason epitomises this well when he states,
A possible way that important messages and philosophies of indigenous cultures can be passed on to non-indigenous cultures could be for groups, clans or nations to decide between themselves collectively if they are willing to share their knowledge and if so, how it shall be done. That way the censorship and cultural copyright can be kept within the people they belong to. A point of reconciliation for Indigenous people and non-indigenous people on the issue of cultural appropriation could be that the dominant cultures can learn many important ways to improve society and the world. There are a multitude of ways we can learn from indigenous people if it is carried out in a respectful way with full cooperation with Indigenous peoples, as opposed to individuals adopting indigenous spirituality or philosophy without permission. In relation to the environment, and society, Western society as a whole would benefit from the application of these principles to the entire worldview. This in turn would create a positive change for Indigenous people of all areas of the world because non-indigenous people still largely misunderstand them and their cultures. If they themselves teach their customs and traditions to non-indigenous people, they hold agency over how they are represented as opposed to the way they, and their cultures have been represented in the past. Furthermore indigenous people would benefit, as would the entire world, from the reversal of destructive practices on society and for the natural world if the West along with the rest of the world adopt their practices.
Indigenous peoples have a far better connection and intricate understanding of the world. The Environment is an important one. Indigenous people have a profound connection to the earth and find intrinsic value in it. For example, Indigenous Australians have a long history of caring for their country, estimates equate to between 30,000 and 60,000 years. They belong to their country and are intimately and permanently tied to it. Furthermore, country is crucial for healing and well being within Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. Illness can result when individuals or groups are displaced or removed from their country. For the Kaytej women of Warrabiri, one remedy for lingering illness is spending time in the bush, away from the settlements contaminating influence. For this reason Warrabiri is sometimes called the ‘sickness place’ by the Kaytej women (Bell, 2002:146). Non-indigenous Australians could learn immensely from this. Given the state of the earth today due to its mistreatment by humans, it is more important now than ever to change our conception of the earth and how we use and care for it.
Another way non-indigenous people could learn from Indigenous people is with regard to family and society, particularly in Western developed countries. Kinship in the Indigenous Australian sense is entirely different to the western model, which has been corrupted by the invention of the nuclear family. In many Indigenous cultures family is a far wider extension of our notion of the family. Strict distinctions are not made between parent, child, cousin, uncle and aunt as they are in non-indigenous Western society. The extended family as a group care for the young and the elderly. The community acts as one group with no real system of hierarchy.
Spirituality is another important way Western culture can adopt from indigenous culture. For Indigenous Australians, spirituality is indivisible from country, culture and kinship. The application of this into Western society would prove as a valuable way to improve the western epistemological approaches to the world, its people and life in general.
In conclusion, Indigenous people and their culture have long been under attack by the Western world whether it has been intentional or unintentional, this needs to be recognised before indigenous culture can be adapted into mainstream Western culture. Whilst not all indigenous people find the concept of their culture being appropriated by others, particularly western culture, offensive, it needs to be acknowledged that many are offended by this. These discrepancies need to be discussed and negotiated. Finally, the world has so much to gain from indigenous cultures. However, indigenous peoples should hold control of how their cultures are appropriated and adopted in amongst other cultures.
References
Bell. D. (2002) Daughters Of The Dreaming. Melbourne: Spinifex Press.
Burns Coleman.E. (2005) Aboriginal Art, Identity and Appropriation. England: Ashgate Publishing Limited.
Cajete. G. (2000) Philosophy of Native Science. Native science: Natural Laws of Interdependence. New Mexico: Clear Light Publishers
Churchill. W. (1994) Indians Are Us? Culture and Genocide in Native North America. Maine: Common Courage Press.
Hart. J. (1997) Translating and Resisting Empire: Cultural Appropriation and Postcolonial Studies. Ziff. B. and Rao. P.V. eds. Borrowed Power: Essays on Cultural Appropriation. New Jersey: Rutgers U.P
Hume. L. (2002) Ancestral Power: The Dreaming, Consciousness and Aboriginal Australians. Carlton South: Melbourne University Press
Reason. P. (1993) Reflections on Sacred Experience and Sacred Science. Journal of Management Inquiry, 2(3) 273-273
Root. D. (1996) Cannibal Culture, Art Appropriation, and the Commodification of Difference. Colorado: Westview Press
Rose. D. (1992) Dingo Makes Us Human: life and land in aboriginal Australian culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Neuenfeldt. K. (2006) The ongoing debate about women playing didgeridoo: how a musical icon can become an instrument of remembering and forgetting.
Trudgen. R. (2000) Why Warriors Lay Down And Die, Northern Territory: Aboriginal Resource and Development Services Inc.
Welch. C. (2002) Journal of Contemporary Religion, Vol.17, No.1. Appropriation of the Didgeridoo and the Sweat Lodge: New Age Baddies and Indigenous Victims? Carfax Publishing
Whitt. L., Roberts. M., Norman.W., Grieves. V. (2001) A Companion to Environmental Philosophy, Ch. 1. Indigenous Perspectives. Blackwell Publishing
(Source: tranceshamanismbodyandsoul.blogspot.com, via melancholic-despondency-deactiv)
Take a walk until you find a tree you identify with, then write a poem using the tree as a metaphor for yourself or your life.
All this squirrel chatter about identifying with trees
Reminds me of white hipster wannabe-spiritual bullshit.
Can you decide between the Druid rowan or oak?
Or shall we be “Hindi” today and find a banyan grove to get “enlightened” in?
Please.
Have you ever cleared the ground of deadfall?
Have you cleared — that is, torn from the earth — the “undesirable” weeds?
Have you softened the earth?
Used the force of your hands, your arms, your body — with trowel, with plough
Re-directed the waters to saturate and weaken hardened grounds?
And then, carefully,
Have you placed seeds into the soil — and then waited?
Do you really understand what waiting means, when you’ve never waited for something to grow?
And do you understand how completely unnecessary you are yet?
The willow tree you look at like a mirror
Didn’t need you to clear the grounds,
Plant it, water it, watch it.
It unfurled tiny leaves of silver green before your mother even considered she might have children someday.
It is a tree.
And you are self-centric.
Recently a follower told me that my ripping on Urban Outfitters was obnoxious. It’s not the first time I’ve heard that. Actually I get told fairly often things to the effect of “oh you just don’t like them because you want to be different and sound smart.” And I totally see why you would think that, and admittedly, I’m obnoxious about it.
I’ve made a few posts before about why I dislike Urban Outfitters so much, namely this response to an ask. But I wanted to elaborate a little.
So I’ll start from the bottom up. Urban Outfitters- a company which offers cool hip clothes with a progressive liberal attitude, right?
Yeah not really.
Meet Richard Hayne.
In 1970 Hayne and his wife founded Urban Outfitters. They have since branched out to open Free People and Anthropologie. He is the current president and CEO of said companies.
He’s also a staunch right conservative. Him and his wife donated 13,000 dollars to Rick Santorum. He’s also, unfortunately, the #262 richest person in the United States according to the 2008 Forbes 400 list (all of this information is well documented across the internet, and can be found on Hayne’s own Wikipedia page.)
Hayne is also openly anti-gay marriage, in 2008 he personally pulled a pro-gay tee shirt from Urban Outfitter’s shelves:
This is the tee shirt in question. Urban pulled it from their shelves after a week siting ”too much bad press” regarding the garment. However, when the designer Tara Littman went to look for the “bad press” she could find no more than one blog post dissing the shirt. Read about the incident here.
And recently, Urban Outfitters sold a decidedly distasteful transphobic greeting card:
To my knowledge it has since been pulled from the site and is no longer available for purchase, but for a company whose image entails a “forward thinking” “progressive” attitude, their actions seem to embody the complete opposite.
While I’m talking about Urban selling merchandise displaying shitty messages: I think it’s worth making note of their anti-woman and racist inventory of the past.
In 2010 Urban Outfitters sold this tee shirt which had “Eat less” emblazoned on it. In a day and age where some 10-15% of the population has some kind of serious eating disorder, I don’t think I have to explain why this was an irresponsible, if not wreckless, shirt to sell to teen girls.
Urban sold this shirt in September and while it’s not as blatantly offensive as “eat less” it’s pretty anti-woman (which isn’t all that surprising coming from a company run by extremely conservative Republicans) and promotes shitty behavior while also trying to make it look cute. So- I don’t know, it bothered me.
Ok now let’s talk about racism.
I believe they apologized for it and blamed it on a web formatting error, but as this article so perfectly put it:
“Fine, Urban Outfitters: you’re not racist, just careless. But you can’t blame anyone for assuming, considering UO’s history of controversy”
I won’t spend too much longer on the careless and controversial things they’ve sold because going through it all would take a very long time, but I would like to talk about something Urban did on numerous occasions (along with many other clothing retailers, like Forever 21) that’s very racist:
labeling apparel as “Navajo”
The folowing articles perfectly articulate why labeling products as “Navajo” is offensive and wrong:
An Open Letter to Urban Outfitters on Columbus Day by Sasha Houston Brown
Urban Outfitters Taken to Task for Faux ‘Navajo’ Products by Allison Berry
Urban Outfitters Catches Heat Over ‘Navajo hipster panty’ and Other Bright Ideas by Jamie Peck
In the first article, an open letter by Sasha Houston Brown, she laid down why she was offended by the merchandise:
In all seriousness, as a Native American woman, I am deeply distressed by your company’s mass marketed collection of distasteful and racially demeaning apparel and décor. I take personal offense to the blatant racism and perverted cultural appropriation your store features this season as “fashion.”
All too often industries, sports teams and ignorant individuals legitimize racism under the guise of cultural “appreciation”. There is nothing honorable or historically appreciative in selling items such as the Navajo Print Fabric Wrapped Flask, Peace Treaty Feather Necklace, Staring at Stars Skull Native Headdress T-shirt or the Navajo Hipster Panty. These and the dozens of other tacky products you are currently selling referencing Native America make a mockery of our identity and unique cultures.
She also points out that falsely labeling merchandise as ‘Navajo’ when it is not, is against the law:
“The Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990 (P.L. 101-644) is a truth-in-advertising law that prohibits misrepresentation in marketing of Indian arts and crafts products within the United States. It is illegal to offer or display for sale, or sell any art or craft product in a manner that falsely suggests it is Indian produced, an Indian product, or the product of a particular Indian or Indian Tribe or Indian arts and crafts organization, resident within the United States. If a business violates the Act, it can face civil penalties or can be prosecuted and fined up to $1,000,000”.
Urban issued an apology and renamed the products but never admitted that they were wrong in the first place.
The cultural appropriation of Native American garments for the sake of fashion is a problem not new or specific to Urban Outfitters but I do feel as though they perpetuate it by continuing to sell apparel which mimics and bastardizes native wear.
Now let’s look at a few cases of Urban Outfitters stealing and copying original work:
The most famous instance was in 2011 when popular Etsy vendor Tru.Che, miss Stevie Koerner, saw that Urban Outfitters had quite literally made and sold carbon copies of her easily recognizable “I heart destination” necklaces.
The accusations of thievery went viral, trending on twitter, appearing on countless blogs, and the story was eventually picked up by the Washing Post, who noted that this wasn’t the first time Urban had ripped off an independent designer.
(in the case of miss Koerner’s jewelry line it could not legally be proven that the design was a copy, she did not sue, and Urban eventually pulled the necklaces.)
Johnny Cupcakes on the left, Urban’s ripoff on the right
In 2004 Urban outfitters asked for some samples from Johnny Cupcakes, an independent clothing brand based out of Boston. The impression was that they were considering carrying some of the label’s shirts, however Urban decided not to carry any of the shirts and never returned the samples. Two years later, in 2006, they put out and sold the tee shirt featured in the above right. A visible copy of Johnny’s design. No legal action was taken.
There are so many instances of Urban stealing work that instead of talking about it all I’ll just link you:
Urban steals a tee shirt design from independent brand Crownfarmer
Urban copies noted fashion house Chloe
Urban steals someones work from Deviant art
Now I’m going to talk about what I hate most about Urban Outfitters, and they aren’t alone in this, but that’s no excuse to practice it nonetheless: the utilization sweatshop and child labor. This is something that I find completely inexcusable of any company to practice, I’ve talked about it a bit here and here.
Urban Outfitters outsources their clothing from sweatshops overseas, there has been some (but not much) evidence found that factories of theirs in China utilized child labor. Though there is evidence that UO buys cotton from suppliers who obtained it by means of forced child labor in Uzbekistan’s cotton fields and uses said cotton in their garments (Aeropostale and Forever 21 are guilty of this as well.)
In 2008, LongView Funds, a mutual funds company with large shares of Urban Outfitters, urged them [UO] to adopt what is called “international labor standards.” According to Wikipeia, this is what that entails:
International labor standards refer to conventions agreed upon by international actors, resulting from a series of value judgments, set forth to protect basic worker rights, enhance workers’ job security, and improve their terms of employment on a global scale. The intent of such standards, then, is to establish a worldwide minimum level of protection from inhumane labor practices through the adoption and implementation of said measures. From a theoretical standpoint, it has been maintained, on ethical grounds, that there are certain basic human rights that are universal to mankind. Thus, it is the aim of international labor standards to ensure the provision of such rights in the workplace, such as against workplace aggression, bulling, discrimination and gender inequality on the other hands for working diversity, workplace democracy and empowerment.
However, UO refused to adopt and disclose a code of conduct based on basic, internationally-recognized human rights (i.e.: they declined to adopt international labor standards.) They instead released a statement saying that they “expect[ed] suppliers to adhere to child-labor laws.”
So there you have it. I hate Urban Outfitters. I hate their business model, I hate the people running it, I hate their racism, I hate that they steal work, and most of all I hate their use of unethical labor. And you know what? I’m going to be obnoxious about it. Because I think UO is a really shitty company. Does that mean i think everyone who shops there is shitty? No. Do I think everyone who works there is shitty? No. Do I hate all their clothing? No.
I don’t think you should shop there, in fact I would encourage you not to. But where you shop is your choice and I fully respect and understand your choices even if they are different than my own. If you really like UO but are maybe questioning shopping there I would encourage you to check out this list of ethical alternatives to Urban Outfitters.
I know this post will come across as obnoxious and even self righteous, please know that is not my intention. If you want to shop at Urban Outfitters by all means do so, my aim isn’t to be judgmental of anyone who does. I really just think and believe that consumers have a right to know about where they’re shopping.
And just for the record, UO may be a shitty company but they aren’t alone. I’ve made a post before about why I dislike Forever 21 so much, and:
Topshop has repeatedly gotten in trouble for utilizing sweatshops
along with Guess, Walmart, Target- the list goes on and on. Even American Apparel, a company that I’ve bought from in the past but am reconsidering supporting, has a seedy history.
This was long and rambly but yeah anyway I plan to stay very obnoxious when it comes to things I think are wrong.
— Sara David (via fatwasandfanboys)
or to appear ‘well-rounded’ or ‘spiritual’ or ‘authentic’ or ‘enlightened’ or ‘hip’ or ‘radical’ (via theanimalnamesofplants)
