Sweatshops explained to fashion bloggers

For once, I'm not going to address my mother, because, you know, my mother is very familiar with the issue of sweatshops. And she's not a fashion blogger either. (I love my spell checker trying to correct it to "joke blogger") (that will be my only joke).

I watched the Norwegian fashion bloggers' reality TV show. It took me a while to talk about it because I wanted to digest it a bit. You can watch it here, it's subtitled in English so it's easy to understand even if you're not a teacher or bilingual.

[Quick reminder: sweatshop = a factory where manual workers are employed at very low wages for long hours and under poor conditions. It's often used when talking about fast fashion.]

Do fashion bloggers, when they do their hauls, ever wonder where their clothes come from? Or do they just take pretty pictures of sponsored items and not care about the rest? They pray hard that readers will buy so they'll receive more clothes made in Bangladesh, Vietnam, Cambodia... BUT WHO CARES ABOUT THAT, COME ON.

Because as Diam's said, "We all have the same, because we're all going to ruin ourselves at H&M." There you go. But to know that the person who made your clothes works 6 days out of 7, 12 hours a day. And above all is paid like $3. PER DAY. Anyway, what matters is that your haul is clearly visible, please talk more in front of the camera or wiggle more for the camera, my dear.

After all, we don't all fight the same battles, I know. I'm not judging (a little, but I try not to judge except for fashion bloggers who film their purchases but I'm sorry not sorry). So it's true, we get indignant for a moment when faced with this web reality show. I even cried over Norwegians when the guy says "I have everything and they ask for $160 and have nothing." They are paid $100 a month haha or sometimes per piece. In France, we complain about working conditions; there, they have a boss constantly on their backs for productivity. Seriously, that's not a life. Did they sign up for that?

Does seeing it again, talking about it always, make consumers change? Will the fast-fashion giants stop consuming humans in this way? Will especially the people who do hauls (that means I film my purchases and say how good what I bought is in front of a camera and then I put it on YT) read the labels? Tonight, after reading this article, will you look at where your clothes come from and curse me?

Let's be honest, no one checks where their clothes come from. What matters is the price. No one will say, "Oh, but it's made in Cambodia, the workers fought for more rights, so I'm not buying it." No one says that. After all, sweatshops are really another problem because it's the brand that abuses employees by underpaying them to make a bigger profit on a product. Cheap labor > expensive products here. Anyway, you get the idea.

Otherwise, the Norwegian web reality show is absolutely a must-see.

I'm like Pierre Rahbi often says, doing my part as a hummingbird. So yes, I will often be (very) annoying about this :(