Several years ago, I watched a documentary on how clothes are made. It seemed like a good idea at the time—a low-risk way to learn a little something. The images hung in my closet next my blouses and seemed emblazoned on every shirt I picked up up at Target.
The True Cost showed women crammed into stuffy factories and living in squalor despite their hard work crafting our cheap clothes. The scene cut to rivers tainted by round after round of chemicals and the the locals with birth defects and mottled skin that came as a result of exposure to that water. Filmmaker Andrew Morgan didn’t leave out the mountains of American castoffs—the “bargains” that were later purged and dropped off at charities, flooding landfills and overseas markets.
When exploitation and suffering turned to the international politics, I knew my Netflix choice wasn’t low-risk after all.
You can read the rest over at Fathom Magazine!
