Opinion | The Gen Z paradox at the center of fast fashion overconsumption

A skit from “Saturday Night Live’s” season finale parodying a commercial from fast fashion giants Shein and Temu landed with a depressing punchline about the state of the industry. As guest host Jake Gyllenhaal and cast members pose in front of a muted, solid-colored backdrop in their fast fashion finest, an off-screen voice cheerfully asserts that their clothing is “not made with forced labor,” that “all workers [are] paid” and the items contain “minimal lead.” When Gyllenhaal finds a note stitched in the seam of his jacket, an off-screen hand grabs it while the disembodied voice promises, “That’s a thank you note from a happy worker.” The skit ends with a question we already know the answer to: If the production of the item being modeled was shady, “would you stop buying it?”

By now, the insidious effects of fast fashion are well-documented and widely known. A recent exposé of the way Shein treats its factory workers isn’t just heartbreaking; it underscores that the lip service the fast fashion giant has paid to fair treatment is just that: talk. According to the publisher of the exposé, Public Eye, a typical factory worker will make at most $1,361 per month for a 75-hour workweek. “I work every day from 8 in the morning to 10.30 at night and take one day off each month. I can’t afford any more days off because it costs too much,” one worker is quoted as saying.

Anecdotally, I know of two people who have found notes pleading for help stitched into a Shein beach cover-up and a knockoff designer dress. Then there are the catastrophic environmental effects activists and reporters have been warning us about. Fast fashion accounts for 10% of total global carbon emissions, as much as the European Union combined. A new HBO documentary about fast fashion giant Brandy Melville culminated with images of discarded fast fashion heaped in mountains big enough to climb covering a beach in Ghana. But this is old news. We’ve heard it. So why, then, won’t we stop buying fast fashion?

It’s lazy and often reductive to blame social media for every new societal scourge, but the rise of social media and the rise of fast fashion are undeniably linked. For one, social media has fundamentally changed how trends take shape. In generations past, trends were generally just silhouettes or styles that were proliferated by cultural moments — perhaps runway shows — before ending up in your closet, à la Twiggy’s 1960s babydoll dress in the pages of Vogue or the light blue pillbox hat Jackie Kennedy wore to John F. Kennedy’s presidential inauguration. From introduction to obsolescence, this traditional trend cycle would last about 20 years.

Today, when an outfit goes viral, we aren’t just inspired; we want it exactly, and we want it immediately. And this is happening again and again every single day. The result is a gravely truncated trend cycle, sometimes lasting just months, and the emergence of microtrends. It might be dated to even refer to the demise of the clean girl minimal makeup aesthetic in favor of the smokey eye, vampy acrylics mob wife aesthetic. It is possible, likely even, that the mob wife aesthetic is passé just weeks after it crossed my feed.

In an alternative reality, the disorienting inclusion of so many trends, influences, aesthetics and “vibes” at the same time could give way to authentic style. You could, in theory, forge your own path, free from the confines of one pervasive look, but that goes starkly against the grain of the reality of the moment. To remain cutting-edge, those who aspire to be fashionable are forced to pick up and drop trends as quickly as the masses absorb them. This whipsaw of trends and microtrends creates the perfect wet and dark environment to keep fast fashion alive and growing.

In 2020, supermodel Kendall Jenner posted a serene summer photo of her drinking a glass of white wine in front of a calm ocean. She wore a floppy sun hat and House of Sunny’s now-infamous green knit Hockney dress. The post and the dress went viral immediately. As quickly as Jenner’s post emerged, cheap fast fashion knockoffs of the Hockney dress took off on social media.

And it really does happen that quickly. Zara is notorious for getting new shipments of clothes twice every week. For H&M and Forever 21, those shipments come daily. Shein adds anywhere from 2,000 to 10,000 individual styles every single day. Ironically, House of Sunny is a sustainable slow fashion brand, releasing only two collections a year. By summer 2022, the Hockney dress and the entire aesthetic it centered on were all but obsolete.

It is easy to point to an apparent socioeconomic divide at the center of the fast fashion conversation. Fast fashion devotees are quick to argue that it is only the wealthy who can afford more expensive, small-batch fashion like the $150 Hockney dress. But that argument ignores a fundamental aspect of modern consumption: how quickly fast fashion clothes are thrown away. Consumers view their fast fashion clothing as all but disposable. A 2015 survey by British charity Barnardo's found that the average American wears an item of clothing just seven times. It’s hard to imagine that that number looks any better today. Slow fashion does cost more at the checkout counter, but not overtime. If you buy a high-quality top from a secondhand retailer like The Real Real and Vestiaire for $75 and wear it once a week for a year, the price per wear is about $1.44. If you buy a similar looking top from H&M for $12.99 and wear it seven times, the price per wear is $1.85.

There is a Gen Z paradox at the center of this type of consumption. Survey after survey indicates that shopping sustainability matters to these young shoppers but that they simply don’t bother to do it. A report by ThredUp found that while 65% of Gen Zers said they want to shop sustainably, 33% more said they’re addicted to fast fashion. Gen Z influencer accounts are rife with ultrapopular haul videos that show them dumping dozens of plastic packaged Shein items onto their perfectly made bedspreads. When a group of Gen Z influencers were invited to a highly controversial tour of Shein factories last year, it took a barrage of angry social media posts and threats of “canceling” to get them to even apologize for attending. Has their fast fashion shopping stopped? I think you can guess.

Perhaps it is systemic of widespread disillusionment, an if-you-can’t-beat-’em-join-’em mentality. According to a long-running study by Pew Research called “Generations,” young adults born in or after 1997 are more disillusioned than any generation in American history. Regardless, as Gen Z becomes older and wealthier, this dissonance is going to become a bigger problem.

At its core, fast fashion is an arbiter of destructive individualism. When you choose a Shein or a Temu or a Zara or an Amazon, you’re choosing yourself over the collective. You’re choosing a fleeting moment on TikTok over the irreversible desecration of the environment, immediate gratification over labor equity and fair pay and excess over quality. You’re choosing perception over authenticity. I’m going to get off my soapbox, though. You already know all this, and you’re not going to stop.

This article was originally published on MSNBC.com