In many societies, Halloween, or other cultural equivalents, are all about dressing up in costumes and decorating with fun ornaments. Whether it is Halloween specifically, fiesta mayor, carnaval, or something similar, many of these celebrations include an aspect of consuming goods\u2014albeit consuming clothes or decorations. Unfortunately, since many of these festivities are an annual event and people often feel the incentive to dress up in a different costume each year, most individuals overconsume and purchase from fast fashion websites to save money. Nevertheless, this action, and the knowledge behind it, contains an innumerable amount of moral dilemmas. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since the entirety of the fast fashion industry is so great, in this article, I will be focusing on the action of buying from fast fashion brands; specifically, the way that people buy from ultra fast fashion<\/em> websites (like Shein, Temu, and Aliexpress) during the autumnal months for Halloween costumes. Ultra fast fashion is the act of companies manufacturing and producing thousands of clothes per day. What is unfortunate is that these companies are unsustainable in countless different ways. Not only do most ultra fast fashion corporations use unethical labour, but they additionally have enormous environmental impacts.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n My experience and knowledge with this scope was brought about quite recently, while brainstorming halloween costumes myself. While I was focused on how I could up-cycle the clothes in my closet or find cheap second-hand clothing to design a specific costume, many of my peers were saying that they would just purchase from Shein because, that way, the clothes would \u201carrive quickly\u201d and they wouldn\u2019t have to \u201cspend so much money or time\u201d on a costume. While it is true that shopping fast fashion is inexpensive and convenient, it is highly unethical. The brutality behind all of this is that while we are concerned about making a \u201ccute\u201d or \u201coriginal\u201d costume, these people working in the fast fashion factories are sacrificing their entire livelihoods for our convenience.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is not uncommon for people to buy from these companies, especially for small events like Halloween. Furthermore, people are often more prone to make superficial excuses for their actions when making quick decisions instead of pondering upon them\u2014which can cause unethical decisions to be made. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Many people buy from these brands because they believe that since they are only buying from the brand once a year, it is not so unprincipled. However, even if it is just once a year, the immoral background of the action is still underlying. The main reason why buying from ultra fast fashion websites is unethical is because of the exploitation that laborers in the countries where the products are being manufactured are subjected to. In many of these countries, the laborers have very few workers rights or protections. This means that they are paid very little money for endless hours of work \u2014 something that is unfair for these impoverished individuals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For consumers, since it appears that \u201ceveryone\u201d buys from fast fashion, it makes the action feel socially acceptable even though it is fundamentally unethical. Under a consequentialist moral framework, buying from fast fashion companies is unethical because buying the clothes forces someone into underpaid labor. Also under the consequentialist framework, buying fast fashion is unethical because of the materials that most of the clothes are made out of. Since most garments are manufactured using cheap synthetic materials like nylon and polyester, they have a high environmental impact because these materials don\u2019t decompose for hundreds of years\u2014contributing to high levels of pollution which can be harmful to wildlife.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Finally, the last reason why the fast-fashion industry is unsustainable is due to the sheer amount of products that they are producing. In spite of the fact that us humans have infinite needs and wants, this Earth consists of a finite number of resources. At the current rate that resources are being consumed and products are being produced, we will soon reach a tipping point\u2014a place where there are no more resources to be used and where there is also no way to return. <\/p>\n\n\n\n With all this being said, I want you to ask yourself whether buying cheap clothes and the clothes arriving quickly is truly worth the cost of someone else\u2019s livelihood and the health of the environment. Before searching for a corset or fairy wings for your Halloween costume on Shein or Fashion Nova, try to think of alternative places to purchase the items from, or be more creative with your costume and find ways to work with the clothes you already have. Ultimately, what matters should not be who has the best costume but how we are protecting this Earth and its inhabitants while we still have the time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In many societies, Halloween, or other cultural equivalents, are all about dressing up in costumes and decorating with fun ornaments. Whether it is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":78,"featured_media":2291,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion-pieces","category-popular-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blueandread.asbarcelona.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blueandread.asbarcelona.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blueandread.asbarcelona.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blueandread.asbarcelona.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/78"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blueandread.asbarcelona.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2290"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blueandread.asbarcelona.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2293,"href":"https:\/\/blueandread.asbarcelona.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2290\/revisions\/2293"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blueandread.asbarcelona.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blueandread.asbarcelona.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blueandread.asbarcelona.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blueandread.asbarcelona.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}