Présentation minimaliste

Fast fashion and fast food : The paradox of the century

Cultural diary #2

Summary

1. Introduction

3. Presentation and analysis of personnal document

2. Presentation of the ducuments we seen in class

4 Conclusion

Fast fashion and fast food

The paradox of the century

Introduction

The modern society bring a lot of improvement but also a lot of deterioration to the humans. In this chapter, we study the paradox of the modern society : the fast fashion and fast food. Why i call that the paradox of the century ? Because today, more and more iniative are taken by a lot of person on the earth to reduce pollution and waste, but also more and more people consume with clothes, unhealthy food that enhance this pollution. But, what is fast fashion and fast food ? Concretely, fast fashion is inexpensive clothing produced rapidly by mass-market retailers in response to the latest trends, and oftenly new collections are released every day in ultra fast fashion. And the definition fast food is a type of mass-produced food designed for commercial resale, with a strong priority placed on speed of service.One thing link these 2 things, the over-consumption.Based on the documents we see in class and personnal documents, in this cultural diary, i gonna respond to the question : why we can call the fast fashion and fast food the paradox of the century ?

First document

This first document is an iconographic document that show 3 asiatic woman in the foreground that who manufacturing nike shoes in a factory. They have a nike logo on the mouth to prevent them to speak, there is a antithesis in two place in this image, first the nike logo on they mouth who seems like a smile whereas the asiatic womans seems like tired, exhausted and unhappy. The second antithesis is with the poster on the back, which seems like a publicity for nike, we can see an athlete on the image, who say "just do it", which do an antithesis because the athlete looks strong and healthy contrary to the asiatic womans. I liked this document because he denounce the bad working conditions and the unhapiness in factory of big brands like nike. I find that this image relates real facts and these conditions are inacceptable for every workers.

Link of the video

Second document

The second document I choose is this video by Teen Vogue called : The problem with fast fashion and was released in 2019 on youtube. The woman in the video first start by explain quickly the bad side of the fats fashion, then she explain that the way people consume clothes have changed over the years ( from bespoke clothing, to ready to wear, then, to fast fashion), next, she gonna explain what is fast fashion, retrace the history of fast fashion (All begin with zara in 1963) and she gonna expose the problems in the fast fashion industry ( bad quality, poor conditions of work, waste). Personnaly, I liked this video because she explain well the main problems of fast fashion with numbers and statistics so that's easier to understand and i'm agree with what she say in the video, even if there is one bad point : she didn't present sustainable alternative to fast fashion.

The third document is about fast food even if this video present an app which aim is to reduce food waste. This video was released by the youtube channel : Now this impact, last year. This video introduce the app : Too Good To Go, an app who fight the food waste across the world. In the first part of the video, they interview the u.s head marketing of Too Good To Go who explain how the app function, and she gonna talk about "suprise bags", which are bags filled with food leftovers by local grocery store, restaurant and sometimes supermarket, then she gonna talk about the food waste around the world and statistics about it and talk about the rise of the app and she also says a very impressive fact " every second, two meals are saved around the world" and she finish by talking about how Too Good to go impact people and there way to consume. So, i liked this video because all is well explained and we clearly understand what is Too Good To Go, and about Too Good To Go, i love the idea of the app because it's a very good solution for fighting the food waste and you pay less your food (3 times less in average).

Third document

Fourth document

The fourth document is an article : "Freeganism: treasure in the trash bin", who was publied on the website The vegetarian traveller, in 2014. This article present the concept of freeganism, a mouvement for fighting food waste by searching for food that was thrown by grocery store in general and who still eatable. oftenly, these grocery store throw this food because these food are beyond the sell-by date after which the grocer can no longer sell them, so a new practice have appeared : the dumpster diving. In the document, the author says that by testing dumpster diving, her and her friends collected food worth hundreds of euros. Personnaly, i don't like this practice even if it's a good solution for certain person, because i find that this is dirty and you can fall on toxic food, and this isn't save a lot of food waste even if this still a good action.

Personnal documents

The true cost

My first personnal document is a documentary "The true cost", which was realased in 2015, this documentary is 92 minutes long. This documentary taks about one of the dark side of the fast fashion : the bad condition of workers in factory. After the building collapse in India in 2013 that kills 1000 workers who was working in a hiden, illegal factory the producer decided to raise fund a,d travel around the world to explore this bad side, in the documentary, we can see the cases of riot between workers and police that lead to the death of rioters. The realisator also presents people that are for the fast fashion so we can see the both point of view in this documentary and this is what i liked about.

Link of the article

This document is an article about the obsession of american for junk food ( basically fast food) and explain this obsession, he was written by spencer smead in 2018. We all know america for it's burger, fries, meat, hot dog, coca-cola etc but he large presence of this food leads american to the overconsumption of fast and junk foodand this is what spencer talk about. He explain the multiple factors of this over consumption : The big presence of fast food like mcdonalds ( 14000 in usa ), the fact that a burger is cheaper than vegetables ( image on the rights) and the last factor is that you are very quickly served when you order at fast food so it's simpler and quicker than cook. Basically, this problem is all over the world but in america, the fast food leads to a big number of obese person and for the health of people and especially young people this is very bad. I liked this document by the way spencer explain the problem because we understand what are the factors and consequences in america.

America Fast Food's obsession

Conclusion

In conclusion both of fast fashion and fast food have bad sides, especially the polluting that they produce and the bad consequences on workers for fast fashion and of the health of consumers for fast food, on the other side, fats fashion permit to people to buy clothes at a cheap price and stay in tendance and fast food is useful when you don't want to cook and don't have a lot of time to eat, there it is the paradox. There a people who fight for these cause but more people who consume every day, so this a very difficult to find a good ending to one of the most problematic subjects on the earth.In general, i liked a lot this chapter because we treat about modern problems and we do cool activities.