There was a time when we thought Gen Z was going to change the world. Finally, a generation on the right side of history, we said, one that cares about the environment and keeping politicians honest. A group of people that will right the wrongs of the boomers and ground the girl-bossing optimism of millennials.
Unfortunately for those of us who were waiting for Gen Z to save us, the results are trickling in, and they’re not pretty.
Take Shein, the Chinese clothing company whose target demographic is Gen Z. If there were any doubts as to whether this generation would prioritize concerns for the future of our planet over environmentally disastrous things like fast fashion, Shein’s recent $100 billion valuation should squash them.
A quick glance at Shein’s offerings explains the appeal. It’s like the Netflix of online shopping—there are endless low-quality options (around 600,000 of them) and absolutely zero aesthetic cohesion.
The items in stock are an amalgamation of every micro and macro trend of the last five years, from faux vintage pieces to even cheaper versions of Zara’s greatest hits, along with countless imitations of obscure independent designers and luxury brands of the moment, like Jacquemus.
By preying on Generation Z’s desperate rat race to remain relevant, Shein has become social media’s Frankenstein—a fast-fashion outlet whose pace and price range elicit the same reaction as single-use plastics: wear it once and throw it out.
Wear and Tear
The company produces so many different versions of what is “in” that every single person making their post-pandemic Coachella debut could have worn a Shein two-piece set without ever experiencing the acute humiliation of bumping into someone in the exact same outfit.
The brand’s identity can be summed up as: Every outfit worn by every influencer in every photo dump ever. The only thing its clothes have in common is that they’re all dirt cheap (presumably a result of low-wage Chinese labor and the use of fabrics made from fossil fuels).
In recent years, sustainability in business was something we seemed to take note of. The success of fashion marketplace Depop showed us a future where buying secondhand was not only environmentally friendly but chic. Reformation—the millennial-cool-girl staple—rose to popularity with the branding “Being naked is the #1 most sustainable option. We’re #2.” The only thing that could rock our undying love for the eco-friendly floral print dresses were the accusations of racism in the company’s workplace, allowing us to forgo one social justice cause for another.
Did the pandemic exhaust us to the point where we decided sustainability was a lost cause? Or was it never actually about anything other than the clothes?
By preying on Generation Z’s desperate rat race to remain relevant, the fast-fashion company Shein has become social media’s Frankenstein.
If you were gathering evidence only from the Internet, it’d be hard not to believe the latter. In a single scroll, I see a young girl promoting cheap plastic sunglasses from Amazon and celebrities with their own, equally cheap swimwear and cosmetic lines, posting hot pics of themselves in nature “for Earth Day.”
Open any app meant to “fuel creativity” and you’re suddenly hit with a wave of despair as you descend into a rapid-trend hellhole in which principles have no significance whatsoever. If anything, “environmentalism” feels more like a trend that’s now over, replaced by checkerboard prints, chain-mail tops, and, inexplicably, swastika necklaces—one of Shein’s many attempts to stay on trend, for which they then apologized with a crying emoji and the words “SORRY—we let you down.”
The endlessly unfulfilling, bottomless pit of “content creation” is certainly to blame. Technology, and tech companies, have captured young people in a never-ending cycle of consumption and promotion and drained them of any revolutionary potential they might have had.
Did the pandemic exhaust us to the point where we decided sustainability was a lost cause? Or was it never actually about anything other than the clothes?
Instead, we spend our time seeking the reward that comes at the end of every photo in a new outfit, every video talking alone in a room, ranting about nonsense like skin-care products or the fuckability of different fictional characters. Views, likes, comments, and shares give us the illusion that our lives have purpose, that there is an effect to our actions, even when that effect is not making a real difference in people’s lives but is merely the pathetic firing off of pleasure centers in our own brains.
What’s more, we are left in the moments between hits of dopamine feeling apathetic and hopeless, too brain-dead to see the forest for the trees and thus incapable of fighting for what could possibly be the lives of our children and grandchildren, if not our own.
Even during the peak of cancel culture, no one was calling out influencers and celebrities for accepting sponsorships from fast-fashion empires, like Australian online boutique Princess Polly, whose clothes are a favorite for YouTubers and Tiktokers showing off their latest hauls.
This is in no way to say I’m in support of public shaming. I’m just saying that if we’re going to public shame, which it seems like … we are, shouldn’t we be shaming the truly sinister parts of our culture and economy, like the fast-fashion companies that use modern-day slave labor in order to make flimsy clothes that will end up in a landfill by the end of the year? It’s not like there’s much use for a donated neon crop top.
If anything, “environmentalism” feels more like a trend that’s now over, replaced by checkerboard prints, chain-mail tops, and, inexplicably, swastika necklaces.
For the past several hundred years, young people have been the drivers of movements to make the world a better place. The boomers protested Vietnam. Gen X came out against the invasion of Iraq. Millennials occupied Wall Street.
Sure, more than 30 percent of our country’s wealth still belongs to 1 percent of the people, a dictator is committing genocide abroad, and we’re all still staring down the barrel of an uninhabitable world, but you get the point! It seems like whenever people grow old enough to actually inhabit positions of power, they are too jaded or comfortable inside the system to make meaningful change.
What’s most frustrating about Gen Z is that they gave up before they even started. Their A.D.H.D. brains, molded by iPad games from before the time they could talk, are incapable of focusing on the task at hand long enough to realize how much destruction their consumerism is causing.
America’s culture as a whole needs to move away from mass production and unsustainable consumption, but at least our parents had the excuse of not knowing any better. And while I completely understand that it’s the corporation and not the individual who is responsible, I cannot help but wonder how young people can so shamelessly support and endorse the very empires they claim to want destroyed. (Gen Z loves to wax anti-capitalist.)
How can we care so much and yet do so little? Especially when the sacrifice sometimes only entails looking “cool” this month.
Perhaps that’s where the answer lies—even though this generation moves through trends at lightning speed, they can’t help but try to keep up because the fleeting approval of others on a screen in the dark is the only way they know how to feel like they exist. They’re still just trying to fit in, because they’re still just kids, and the jury is out on if they’ll ever grow up.
Cazzie David is a Columnist for AIR MAIL and the author of No One Asked for This, a collection of essays about social media and millennials