Privilege Meets Poverty

So the ethical consumption thought process continued recently as I watched the BBC's Blood, Sweat and T-shirts.  What I realised as I watched this documentary style reality tv was very obvious.  It is not particularly insightful for the more intelligent. But for me it was an important moment.  As the show took a handful of different-shades-of-spoiled british twenty-somethings to India and put them through their paces working at all levels of the Indian garment industry - from intense but reputable factory seamstress-ing to something a whole lot more sweaty, from cotton picking to slaving their guts out (okay, complaining their guts out) at a cotton mill - I realised just how many stages are involved in the production of clothes.  And so how many different stages there are to monitor before we can talk about ethical production.  

When I think about the ethics of clothing production I think my eyes have been almost totally fixed on the sweatshop with the mill and the field sitting in the shadows somewhere.  This show has helped bring them out in to the light for me and I feel like I understand a little more about the massive challenge we are faced with.  When companies like Primark talk about the Ethical Trading Initiative and the progress they are making with their producers via, for example, independently auditing factories etc we must always ask the question - just how far back along the production process is progress being sought (if changes are in fact being made at all).  I certainly have my suspicions about what the answer to that enquiry would be.  

If only Channel 4 hadn't (as far as I could make out) pulled their documentary "The Devil Wears Primark" at the last moment maybe we would have a better look at their argument.  The truth is incredibly difficult to uncover when all you have is a laptop and tv production companies to help you out...and as a good friend of mine recently found out, even going in to what passes for the heart of the Seattle-based beast does not mean you get to the heart of the matter...

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Also, I kinda fell in love with her on the right...in all her big-hearted, ditzy glory...