thechosenone

I went back to my hometown recently and discovered they had opened up a new thrift store. two spacious floors filled with clothes and, you know, the regular stuff. it was filled, but not packed, not like the typical thrift store covered in smells and dust. no, this one felt exclusive. everything looked brand new. thrilled by the opportunity to engage in some conscious shopping, I browsed around for a good while, bought two lovely skirts and felt happy about it. it didn't really hit me until I was on my way out, the strange, grim realisation: why DID everything feel so brand new? why are my hands so clean? why is it that these disposed clothes feel like they have barely even been touched at all?

we live in a world where you can drop off a bag of old, unwanted clothes at an H&M store and receive a £5 voucher in return to spend on something new. we live in a world of perverse logic. I'm sure that the minimalist trend is about something like questioning our need for the unnecessary stuff, getting rid of it all, alleviating our environmental pressure. but all I feel is pressure to build myself a completely new wardrobe, because a minimalist wardrobe is apparently something you should build, at least that's what I hear. so I find myself urging for the perfect set of neutrals: blacks, whites, greys. I don't even enjoy wearing that kind of non-coloured clothing, yet I feel like I desperately need it.

in my mother’s cupboard, there are loads and loads of food storage containers in glass. she had an outburst a few years ago, threw away all the old plastic ice-cream containers that were stocking up, went out and bought a bunch of new ones in glass and felt soothed by this whole new plastic diet. there are still ice-cream boxes in the house of course: in the fridge, filled with ice-cream. everyone needs some ice-cream from time to time so I can't really blame her, but the perverse logic is that now there are both glass and plastic containers stocking up in the kitchen.

in defense of my mother, let me just add that it’s not only my mother, it’s mothers everywhere. mothers in charge of households, and therefore in charge of the plastic detox, of making sure to purchase the new reusable shopping bags for the grocery store, of making sure to purchase the most nutritious new organic foods imposed on us, of generally organising the home and the lifestyles living within it. they are targets of the sustainability pressure, bearers of its responsibility burden.

I knitted dishcloths as Christmas gifts to everyone in my family. I used some linen blend yarn, a beautiful yarn, shiny almost but still sturdy enough so the dishcloth could be put in the washer and reused, over and over. my brother reported back a couple of months later: he hated it. had thrown it out already. he claimed it got smelly and disgusting. sure, he had just had a baby and babies throw up a lot, but still. and when I first heard about bamboo toothbrushes I got so excited I had to buy one immediately. used it for maybe two months until it started to get worn out, so I threw it out and switched back to the old plastic toothbrushes instead. they usually last for half a year, at least. I don't even care if it's unhygienic to keep a toothbrush for that long. I care about sustainability, which is why the perverse logic made me knit the rejected dishcloths and buy that worthless bamboo toothbrush in the first place.

there is this Swedish Instagram account that has gained a lot of attention in the last few years. it's called "aningslosainfluensers", roughly translated to naive/ignorant/oblivious influencers. influencers can be bloggers or youtubers and they are often women and I suppose they are considered entrepreneurs of some sorts. they can make money out of flying to bali or abu dhabi, and this Instagram account calls them out on the emission footprint resulting from it. it's crude and funny and perfectly reasonable. a classic 'naming and shaming' strategy to change bad environmental behaviour. although, I never see shaming of the ridiculous business men on their fancy business flights going to their stupid business meetings. who is calling them out?

the women, the mothers, the market, we are supposedly turning sustainable in symbiosis. I switched out my entire skincare routine recently, or to call it what it really is: a dab-something-on-that-face-mess. but I had heard about toxic chemicals and "whatever you put on your skin you should also be willing to put in your mouth", or something like that, maybe phrased in a less sexual way. I bought oils extracted from exotic plants I've never heard of and rose water to spray on the face for some reason, but turns out it didn't really do any wonders for my skin. quite the opposite, actually. so, I returned to my old stuff and now there is a bunch of half-empty bottles of obscure oils hidden in the back of my bathroom cabinet.

imagine you are standing in front of some button that says: regulate me. prohibit me. charge me, to stop doing these things, to stop doing it all wrong. would you press the button? I know I would, and I can't pretend that it doesn't come from a position of privilege, but I really would. regulate me, prohibit me, charge me, get me out of the sustainability trap, the patriarchal trap, the neoliberal trap, the upside-down world, the perverse logic from hell.