"Around 15 million garments per week flow through Kantamanto, one of the largest secondhand clothing markets in the world...."

"Retailers take out substantial loans to purchase the bundles, hoping to find worthwhile garments in sellable condition. Yet almost half of what is bought is thrown away.... Why is there so much secondhand clothing? Increasingly, it’s built into the way we dress: fast fashion, the trendy, mass-produced clothing that can be made quickly and at low cost.... [T]he average person purchased 60 percent more clothing in 2014 compared to 2000, while each garment was kept for only half as long.... [C]lothing production accounts for 10 percent of the world’s carbon emissions. In response to increasing criticisms, fast fashion brands like Uniqlo, Zara, and Urban Outfitters have launched lines with a sustainable veneer: collections made with recycled materials... referred to... as 'greenwashing.'... [One activist] proposes a solution that would expand upon the traditional Three Rs kids are taught in schools—Reuse, Reduce, and Recycle—by adding Reckoning, Recovery, and Reparations.... In order to make fashion truly sustainable, the world will require Westerners to radically shift our relationship to clothing itself."

From "Greenwashing Fashion/These days, sustainability is on trend. But the trend cycle of fast fashion isn’t sustainable" (The Nation). 

Do you have the "relationship to clothing" described in the article? I don't think I do. I know better than to donate things that aren't saleable. Just throw them out in your own trash. Don't make them take a journey halfway around the world to be thrown out later. And if it doesn't belong in the trash, why not keep wearing it until it does? 

If the answer is It went out of style, then you can stop buying things that have that sort of style of planned future unstylishness. Choose classic, timeless styles and utilitarian clothing. 

If the answer is It doesn't fit anymore, then donate what's resellable. Better yet: maintain a consistent body size. You know that would be good for you. And it would also be good for the environment in 2 ways: 1. You'd be offloading less clothing into the secondhand market, and 2. You would not be overconsuming food and using the additional fossil fuel it takes to move your extra poundage in your motorized vehicle.

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There is no comments section anymore, but you can email me here. Unless you say otherwise, I will presume you'd enjoy an update to this post with a quote from your email.

"Think of all the fat celebrities — predominantly Black women and women of color — who have paved a path in plus-size fashion, allowing so many of us fat folks to explore our personal style."

"The choice [by plus-size luxury retailer 11 Honoré] to collaborate for the first time with rich white Lena Duhnam, who flashes her privilege like it’s a joke... speaks volumes. It’s a reminder that plus-size fashion is still an exclusive club intent on keeping authority and power rotating in the same circles, desperate to do anything but give fat Black women their flowers."

From "The Problem With Lena Dunham’s Plus-Size Collection" by Kendra Austin (at The Cut).  Austin calls Dunham a grifter: "She grifts."

Here's what the page over there looks like (on my computer):

That Marc Jacobs ad is mindbending. Click to enlarge and clarify. Speaking of giving "women their flowers" — look at those big bulgy roses bursting forth from the model's breasts. And what is she so glum and leg-spread-y about — shopping?!

How emotional is shopping for clothes? Apparently, there's big racial turmoil, such that a white woman promoting plus-size clothing is heard to "speak volumes" about white supremacy. If I'm reading Austin correctly, she's observing that black women made clothing for fat women trendy, and Dunham is appropriating their creation. But I read Dunham to say — in so many words — that white women are fat in a different way, a way that is so uncool that they need special help from a white woman who openly admits she's fat like that:

[Dunham] describes the changes she has witnessed as “not the cool kind that make you muscular” but “just the kind that make your face fat.”...

Later, Dunham complains about the language around plus-size fashion, arguing that descriptors like “plus,” “curve,” and “body-positive” are used to describe a community of “curvy bodies that look like Kim Kardashian has been up-sized slightly,” who “want big beautiful butts and big beautiful breasts and no cellulite and faces that look like you could smack them onto thin women.”

ADDED: I think the model in the Marc Jacobs ad is Madonna's daughter Lourdes. I'm just noticing "Madonna's daughter Lourdes announced as the new face of Marc Jacobs" (CNN).

"Say f*** it, put on a your string bikini, and imagine that you're a golddigger who created your own happy ending and is now giving all the cash you scored to the resistance behind your conser[v]ative husband's back."

That's a photo caption by Lena Dunham that appears with a photo in "Lena Dunham's most body-positive photos on Instagram" (NY Post). 

It's an interesting collection of photos with captions straining at humorousness. Though the Post assumes it's all body positivity because Dunham is, we're told, a "vocal advocate of body positivity," the text and pictures don't show unalloyed positivity. Unalloyed positivity would be inane. And inconsistent with comedy.

If inane, uncomic expression of the experience of female embodiment is what you want, read this other NY Post article, "Khloé Kardashian breaks silence, talks body image struggles after unwanted photo saga." 

Kardashian has a problem with the publication of a photograph of her in a bikini looking like a reasonably nice, ordinary woman. It runs counter to her public image as a beautiful woman, part of a beautiful-women family. How can she fight that without expressing negativity about her body, making the ordinary women of the world feel bad about themselves, and looking like she's on the wrong side of the body-positivity movement? Here's the quote she (or her people) came up with:

"The photo that was posted this week is beautiful. But as someone who has struggled with body image her whole life, when someone takes a photo of you that isn’t flattering in bad lighting or doesn’t capture your body the way it is after working so hard to get it to this point — and then shares it to the world — you should have every right to ask for it to not be shared — regardless of who you are."

FROM THE EMAIL: A reader named Roz writes: 

Lena Dunham displays her unfortunately grotesque physique (nttawwt,) semi-humorously while one of the Kardashian girls asks for a photo to not be published because it is not a perfectly edited photo of her rather gorgeous looking body. Each woman has body positivity issues. Which one is more screwed up?

My vote is for Dunham. The Kardashian girl actually works out and takes care of her health so if I had to make a judgment I’d say she has more positivity towards her body and is in fact a healthier person, she’s a better role model.

Of course this could be due to genetics and she had a head start, but Dunham revels in her obesity which is not healthy. Even if you have a positive attitude towards your obesity you are more prone to diabetes and that’s not good.

Dunham suggests someone who is a golddigger give her money to the resistance? That’s kind of a twisted unrealistic mind imo it’s lame humor. The golddigger depends on “her man” for her income and her lifestyle so she’s the last person who is going to upset the system which keeps her in appointed in Gucci and LV. Dunham is actually insulting women who exploit the assets she doesn’t possess.

I don’t think that Dunham’s self deprecating humor and exhibitionism under the guise of being a body positivity activist is a sign of health either. Imo it’s a sad need for attention from someone who grew up in a household with famous parents. Maybe some women can get encouragement from the thought that if Dunham can look like that and feel good about herself then what am I complaining about?

I don't know which one is more screwed up, but I do think Dunham has done more with her mind. And I care more about how these 2 contributors to the pop culture have helped or hurt the consumers of the material they've created. Which one has screwed other people up the most? I think the Kardashians have done more harm, with so much shallowness, artificiality, and conformist beauty obsessions. Dunham isn't fooling anyone into thinking it's not unhealthy to be obese. She's showing herself as she is and as many people — not hiding herself away. 

I agree that the golddigger fantasy is inconsistent with feminism, but that does make it transgressive — for a feminist. It would be more transgressive if the rich husband wasn't conservative.

AND:

 

@catlady_37

#khloekardashian #kardashian #kimkardashian #bodyimage #facetune #photoshop #kyliejenner #jenner #bodydysphormia #mentalhealthmatters #fyp

♬ original sound - CatLady37 😸🐈🐈‍⬛🐈

ALSO: More from Roz:

I don't follow the pop culture very closely so while I agreed with you that Lena has done more with her mind, turns out that Lena and Khloe are actually friends and collaborators. Who knew?

She links to "Khloé Kardashian Discusses Her Spirituality in Lena Dunham’s Lenny Newsletter/'When you think Kardashian, devout probably isn’t the first thing that crosses your mind.'" 

[Khloe] details what it was like growing up with a Christian Armenian household, and the ways in which she has come to “believe with every fiber of [her] being that there is a higher power”.... “I’m very conversational with God and spirits,” she writes. “I talk to myself and to them but sometimes unconventionally. I’ll be lying in bed and just say out loud, ‘Lord, thank you so much for keeping my brother and sisters healthy!’ Every night I say my prayers, often with my nieces and nephews. I talk a lot to my dad if I’m feeling something where I wish he were here to guide me . . . I like to give praise and gratitude. I know how fortunate I am.”