ECO ANXIETY DOOM for Fashion is Psychology
Painful pings in your chest, shortness of breath, nausea. I can correlate these sudden and unsettling jolts with anxiety. How do we get to the root of our anxiety? Well, we can’t fully, but the surge of petrifying media at our fingertips definitely triggers dooms more frequently than I’d like to admit, specifically, eco-anxiety dooms.
What is eco-anxiety? Characterized by ‘a chronic fear of environmental doom’ when the state of the environment directly affects our mental health, defined by the American Psychological Association. Correlating this doom alongside fashion can feel as though it has a chokehold on us in the most backwards way. The ‘doom’ coinciding with our knowledge of fashion ambiguities leads us into corners, corners that address some of our generations’ most constraining topics.
Headline Teasers
I find myself fearing the unknown but slightly known, if that makes sense. In turn, I yearn to know more through the heartache. The ambiguous yet alluring article titles in media these days contribute to this feeling of knowing just a bit, but not enough. Teasing our minds into the uncanny lost realities of our environment and the world of ubiquitous fast fashion.
https://www.instagram.com/p/C8KkiHovP6k/?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
The more we try to understand, the more we have to dissect. ‘Thrift more, buy less. Donate old clothing! Shop local.’ These simple yet daunting suggestions within the world of fashion consumption are at the root of how we make ‘change’ in our relationship with clothing, fast fashion and our own personal waste. But besides these mindless suggestions, what do we really feel in control of? What information do we retain when bombarded with the headlines of today?
New Age Mental Dooms
I tend to think of fast fashion's grasp on the people as a new age mental doom. How does the chronic fear of fast fashion doom directly affect our mental state? What is it that triggers us? For starters, the fashion industry is responsible for producing over 100 billion garments a year, with an astounding 87% ending up in landfills. Typically, these garments are incinerated to cope with the overwhelming volume received. The amount of clothing produced absolutely does not align with the amount of clothing discarded, therefore creating the absurdity of waste we know today. The thresholds are bursting.
When considering anxieties surrounding the fashion industry, false claims such as greenwashing, unreconciled policies, and destruction of unsold goods are at the forefront of conversation, yet simultaneously, these matters can feel ‘hush hush’ to the public. At the beginning of 2024, policies surrounding these regulations in the EU were in review. Greenwashing is a deceptive claim in which companies lead on consumers, insisting on vague recycling processes to consumers that simply do not exist.
Carrying the Weight
These truths have begun to infiltrate society, and personally, the constant back and forth on how the fashion industry operates and disrupts, creates this weight, this burden inside of me, an anxiety for our current state, and what is to come.
I think about my closet, I think about each garment I own, what it took to be living between my walls. I think about who had a hand in its production, I think about the pain it caused. I think about sweatshops, I think about women, I think about children. Within moments, I’m then blasted with ad’s, black friday sales, BOGO’s, FW25 runway, and the anxieties and heartache that I had, they are silenced by the noise. This cyclical bombardment today, creates a numbness. Eco-anxiety affecting our mental health comes persistently at full throttle.
Combat the Noise
There are ways to combat these anxieties! Investing in community feels like something we had forgotten about, but it craves our attention and resilience now more than ever. By planning clothing swaps, tailoring, mending and repurposing our clothing, volunteering locally, being a conscious shopper, and attending our cities’ forums (to name a few) we can create impact.
https://www.instagram.com/p/DCLQbgNR_TI/?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
Somehow combating the anxieties can feel as simple as signing up to volunteer at your local community garden.
https://www.instagram.com/p/C-n1q2wS3tT/
Or better yet, we can mend our existing garments rather than purchasing new. Learning a skill is icing on the cake! Coinciding with mending, upcycling an existing garment and offering it a new life is a great option when considering being a conscious shopper.
https://www.instagram.com/p/DCmcxnQSCyn/?img_index=1
Feeling stuck in the doldrums of the eco-anxiety doom can feel incredibly debilitating. Real change within societies’ structure comes with re-defining policy, creating petitions, and showing up within your local community. As daunting as attending a city council meeting may seem, initially just being a fly on the fall can be a leap furthering our insight on the current state of our government and ways to combat the disparities that create our anxieties.
https://www.change.org/t/fast-fashion-en-us
Could we potentially cradle our eco-anxieties and diminish the pain we feel from the world of fashion? I guess there’s only one way to find out.