August 2021
According to C.S. Lewis, the lay theologian author of The Chronicles of Narnia, ‘We are what we believe we are.’
Heads up: in these challenging times, of course, it’s nice to dig around uplifting messages that might encourage us to move forward with love for our selves, love for others – and with sustainable, coherent enthusiasm, too.
Oh, and let’s not forget those messages that might enable us to inspire others as we explore our own groove. 😊
For now, let’s just see where this little mind-meandering article might strike roots and grow.
When it comes to the sexualised, female fashion industry what, really what, is in it for us, women of all ages?
Like, why do we keep doing our best, often at considerable expense [if the garments are considered ‘durable’ instead of ‘disposable’], to give boys and men the eye-candy they crave whilst we know – and say – that we don’t want to be treated like a superficially attractive … lollipop?
Here’s the complication: however well-intentioned business incubators, inspired entrepreneurs or long-established firms might be, their main goal, we know, is to create and distribute their products as efficiently as possible.
They do that via numerous online services and social platforms.
Of course, their marketing strategies are engineered to make us want to come back for more.
Perhaps it could be said that, together and separately, we unconsciously believe that the products we choose to buy from any of these industries work on us like Augmented Reality (AR) works on Pokemon Go.
Maybe these products will successfully enhance all aspects of our physical reality.
Already now, they allow us to ‘seem’ to be in the same bracket as those we envy and want to impress – starting with our loved ones, our friends, our colleagues and strangers, too.
The more of us project in the same manner, the stronger that augmented false reality becomes.
Serious question: am I wrong in thinking that whether it’s a pendant said to offer protection again EMF, a financial blessing calligraphy crafted as an NFT we should trace daily on our smartphone screen, a flip phone while our ‘old’ model still functions as it should, a burst of ‘retail therapy’ intended to release us from stress, free meditations and guides to better health and fitness, retreats to allow us the space to find our selves, all that is ‘buy-able’ has been invented, assembled, packaged and marketed for one main reason that is probably greater than the urge to serve humanity one individual at a time.
Heads up: the fashion and cosmetic industries are no exceptions.
Neither is the industry of holistic wellness.
Reality check: because so many of us suffer from a blend of conscious or unconscious insecurities, a fear of social comparison, shame and ill health, these days more than ever, we find purpose in experimenting with various pursuits that might bring on holistic wellness.
And on the whole … that’s all for the better.
As an aside, according to the Global Wellness Institute, the global health and wellness industry is currently worth $4.2 trillion.
Unless companies and outfits exist as not-for-profit organisations led by CEOs, masters, visionaries, entrepreneurs, gurus – and investors – content to meet life with nothing more/nothing less than a sustainable, financially safe middle-class personal status, they all share a common endpoint: proving themselves by making $$$$$$ – the more, the better.
It’s legal.
The Freedom to Choose option is enabled so … why not, huh?
Bottom line: the goal of everyone within all industries is to reinforce a reality that grabs – and keeps – as many of us as possible because, without our interest in their products i.e., without our buying power, their industries will cease to be relevant.
They will cease to exist.
And that, of course, would bring on another story altogether when it comes to employment and the global economy.
Yes, we are interlinked to each other, to all and to every thing there is.😊
Yes, it’s complicated.
Best intentions: as beings struggling in an often-depleting environment, our aim is to access a sustainable level of vitality and purpose as means of relieving stress.
Our aim is also to better frame and control our essential goals along with genuinely enjoying the lives we karmically continue to co-create with the universe.
Back to the fashion industries:
Current fashion has the same back story of sexuality that it had hundreds of years ago. Then as now, it’s always been ‘fashioned’ to please the male gaze. And nothing pleases that gaze more than whatever can potentially trigger sexual arousal and/or the urge to manipulate and control.
Could it be that the fashion shapers of the current decade were collectively inspired by the styles worn by sex workers in the famed Red Light District of Amsterdam – or, for that matter, by the apparel seen in any sex club or porn video?
Oh, and yes, the slit!
The leg-revealing slit skirts and dresses that enable a show of the thigh are still with us, but, these days, the slits go much higher than the ones legendary Ava Gardner showcased in some of her films – back in the ’40s.
Bottom line: though price tags vary, one range, however vast it might seem, is routinely displayed on most global shelves and hangers. That one range is ‘fast fashion’ – fast-changing fashion – and its numerous accessories.
And that’s at a time when it is reasonably common knowledge that more than 80% of these mostly ‘un-disposable’ clothes bought every year by way of our disposable income end up in lands fills well before their time.
That’s because they’re cheap, and we cultivate the urge to replace them with equally cheap ‘new releases’.
Too numerous even for our local and international charities to process, megatons of unusable used clothing end up on the African continent, clogging up their waterways and polluting their seas.
That’s at a time when it’s also common knowledge that fast-fashion clothes are usually assembled under sweatshop-like conditions, often involving children.
I honestly don’t get it.
Reality check: industries such as the clothing and cosmetic industries are not the ‘bad guys’ for drilling as deeply as they can into a very willing consumer base who dreams of, someday, being seen and loved by way of their allure.
The ‘bad guys’, I’ll dare say, are those who enable their practices by embracing them.
Argh … no!
There are no ‘bad guys’.
Only hordes of people, near and far, behaving unethically.
The fabricated value of feminine beauty has been ingrained and incredibly inflated over the centuries.
Reality check: to the Neanderthal male brain, the appearance of breasts signalled the young females were ready for breeding and, back then, males’ primal instinct was to procreate.
The instinct to procreate was about survival.
The rest is history.
Terribly ancient history still leads the brain of Man of the 21st century.
His sexual urges are still triggered by that most primal wiring that ‘pings’ when his eyes connect with breasts.
It could be said that there has always been a price to pay for women having remained compliant (too much to say ‘complicit’?) with what has -over the millennia – morphed into the desire of boys and men to ‘see breasts’.
It’s very difficult for some of us to understand why, separately and collectively, women have not yet drilled down enough to ‘grow’ boys into men who, over the centuries, might have eventually found purpose in pro-actively dimming down their primitive urges.
Heads up: when we pay attention to the culture that drives the objectification of girls and women and – seemingly in its shadow – the forever rising occurrences of domestic violence and all manner of sexual abuses, then we know the solution cannot be found simply by clamouring for new laws and more accountability.
Laws only dish out penalties after the event.
Penalties only deter the less ‘reactive brains’ – those who remain connected to their social conscience – no matter what.
So along with denouncing correctly and clamouring calmly, we could reject the false narrative that sexual and fashion freedoms in our democracies require us to use our bodies a bait.
Warning: ever since I embarked on this three-part fashion centred mind-meander, my darling partner, Myahr, has warned me to not come across ‘as an older woman out of touch with what it means to be a liberated woman in 2021.’
So, dear reader, hopefully, you won’t think that as you read on.
