作者： chenchen

For Most Latinos, Latinx Does Not Mark the Spot

“Don’t you mean Latinx?”

My white classmate had a confident look on his face. I was one of the only Latinos in the school, but that didn’t stop him from labeling me.

“No, I don’t.”

Silence followed, and his confidence turned into confusion.

“It’s complicated,” I added, trying to ease the situation and avoid a full-on rant.

The United States has always had trouble categorizing people of Latin American descent, and the term Latinx is just the most recent example. Created as a gender-neutral alternative to Latino or Latina, it has gained momentum over the past decade and is now used by politicians, universities and corporations eager to signal their awareness of this new term. Despite its good intentions, many Latinos, including myself, view it as problematic.

Latinx doesn’t work as an ethnic label mainly because it’s not even embraced by the community it describes; according to a 2020 study by the Pew Research Center, only 3 percent of U.S. Latinos use the term. Most haven’t heard of it, and those who have overwhelmingly reject it. Many of us find Latinx confusing or culturally offensive.

This is partially because of the term’s linguistic nuances. Latinx is an Anglicization of our language, an artificial label that defies the basic rules of Spanish pronunciation. To native Spanish speakers, Latinx feels foreign and imposed.

Conversations about gender inclusivity in Latin America have already been happening since long before the introduction of Latinx. Activists in Argentina have offered Latine as a non-Anglicized gender-neutral option which actually works in Spanish. Other accepted gender-neutral terms include Latin and Latin American. These alternatives prove that Latinx is simply not necessary.

Language changes over time, but such adaptations must be organic. Forced changes from outside our community are a form of linguistic imperialism, which centers the English language and perpetuates cultural erasure. At its core, this is an issue of linguistic self-determination. The Latino community doesn’t need politicians and corporations to “fix” our language; we can confront our community’s issues on our own terms.

It’s important that our society move toward gender inclusivity. But imposing an unwanted label on another community isn’t the right way to do that. While well-intentioned, the use of Latinx creates more problems than solutions, and makes Latinos feel ignored and disrespected.

To would-be allies, rather than rushing to embrace the latest progressive shibboleth, please step back and allow us the space to identify ourselves on our own terms. I am not Latinx. I am Latino, Latine, Latin or Latin American, and I’ll resist any attempt by someone else to define me con todo mi corazón.

Works Cited

De León, Concepción. “Another Hot Take on the Term ‘Latinx’.” The New York Times, 21 Nov. 2018.

Douthat, Ross. “Liberalism’s Latinx Problem.” The New York Times, 5 Nov. 2019.

Inocencio, Josh. “Why I Won’t Use Latinx.” Spectrum South, 6 Sept. 2017.

Lopez, Mark Hugo et al. “About One-in-Four U.S. Hispanics Have Heard of Latinx, but Just 3% Use It.” Pew Research Center, 11 Aug. 2020.

McWhorter, John. “Why Latinx Can’t Catch On.” The Atlantic, 23 Dec. 2019.

Politi, Daniel. “In Argentina, a Bid to Make Language Gender Neutral Gains Traction.” The New York Times, 15 April 2020.

The American Teacher’s Plight: Underappreciated, Underpaid and Overworked

I had perfected my routine: wake up, turn on my computer, log into Zoom and turn off my camera for a long day of virtual classes. That is, until I noticed that I wasn’t the only one with my camera off. My heart sank at the sight of my teacher trying to interact with a screen full of black boxes with barely any response, despite his repeated attempts to elicit conversation.

Too engrossed in our own issues, students are oblivious to the plight our teachers have experienced during the pandemic, much less the countless struggles teachers have faced over the past few decades. Teaching in America has become a thankless profession; teachers are unappreciated, underpaid and overworked. But how did we get here?

Before the 1800s, teaching positions were largely held by men, until socio-economic shifts facilitated the entrance of women into the work force. As teaching was one of the few jobs that fit within the feminine ideal, women increasingly took on teaching roles. The feminization of this occupation correlated with a decrease in respect for teaching and in teachers’ wages as schools paid women less for their work. This perception of teaching has persisted: The New York Times finds that today, “jobs dominated by women pay less on average than those with higher proportions of men” and “enjoy less prestige.” Funding for K-12 education has also suffered, as the Center for American Progress found that the “states with the steepest funding declines have seen one-fifth of state education funding vanish.”

As a result, teaching is becoming unsustainable. Teacher salaries simply aren’t enough, as stagnant wages over the last 20 years have forced many teachers to take on extra work to supplement what should be a full-time job.

This ongoing undervaluation of teaching, combined with a lack of education funding, has created a perfect storm for teachers and students alike. Not only are fewer people going into teaching, but lower wages contribute to lower quality teachers. Better teaching quality is the top factor behind increased student achievement, meaning the state of teachers’ salaries is damaging the quality of American education as a whole. In fact, U.S. education rankings lag dramatically behind those of its global counterparts.

How do we fix this education crisis? For starters, we need to increase investment into public education to bolster teacher’s salaries and provide necessary classroom funding. Our political leaders must also heed feedback from teachers, as their voices are often sidelined and ignored, leading to brewing frustration.

As for your roles, my fellow students, the next time you see your teacher struggling during online school, remember the sacrifices they’ve made for the sake of your education, and go turn that camera on.

Works Cited

Boyle, Elizabeth. “The Feminization of Teaching in America.” MIT Program in Women’s and Gender Studies.

Diliberti, Melissa Kay, Heather L. Schwartz and David Grant. “Stress Topped the Reasons Why Public School Teachers Quit, Even Before Covid-19.” RAND Corporation, 2021.

García, Emma, and Elaine Weiss. “A Policy Agenda to Address the Teacher Shortage in U.S. Public Schools.” Economic Policy Institute, 15 Oct. 2020.

Partelow, Lisette, Sarah Shapiro, Abel McDaniels and Catherine Brown. “Fixing Chronic Disinvestment in K-12 Schools.” Center for American Progress, 20 Sept. 2018.

Ravitch, Diane, and Antonia Cortese. “Why We’re Behind: A Report by Common Core.” Grantmakers in the Arts, 2009.

Rich, Motoko. “Why Don’t More Men Go Into Teaching?” The New York Times, 6 Sept. 2014.

“Why Teachers Are Paid So Little In The U.S.” YouTube, uploaded by CNBC, 10 Dec. 2020.

Cheap for You. Costly for the Environment.

We walk into the bread aisle on our daily trip to the grocery store and are overwhelmed by the large, colorful signs advertising the deals of the day. “Buy Two Loaves, Get The Third Free,” one sign reads. Of course, my mother does not pass up that kind of bargain; she quickly grabs the three loaves. Fast forward two weeks later, two of the loaves of bread, still untouched, have expired.

This wasteful cycle is typical of American households. According to a study published in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, the average U.S. household wastes 31.9 percent of the food they purchase annually. Privilege underlies this cycle of excess consumption and subsequent waste. In countries where food is abundant, cheap and easily accessible, like the United States, most people do not think twice about all the food they discard.

From your trash bin, our food waste’s next home is the landfill. The Environmental Protection Agency finds that food is the largest occupant of landfills, making up 24 percent of the 146.1 million tons of total municipal solid waste in landfills in 2018. Therefore, in a year, more than 35 million tons of food ends up in landfills; according to The New York Times, around 40 percent of which — 14 million tons of food — is thrown out by consumers.

The issue worsens when the food reaches the landfill; our wastefulness is a significant contributor to climate change. As stated by The New York Times, in landfills, food waste “decomposes and emits methane, a potent greenhouse gas”; this creates 3.3 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases annually across the globe and amounts to about 7 percent of total emissions per year. The issue does not end there; Forbes points out that the wasted food also drains the resources that went into making it, including “a quarter of our water supply.”

As one of the top contributors to climate change, the global food system undoubtedly requires changes in all aspects, including production, processing and supply, on top of consumption. But, as consumers, we drive the food industry, and thus by reducing our household waste and, in turn, our carbon footprint, we are capable of reshaping it. With simple adjustments to our shopping habits, more environmentally conscious shopping trips are feasible. The Federal Drug Administration advises that people make a shopping list before going to the grocery store, be mindful of the items they already have, be aware of what they intend on preparing and be wary of perishable items. The environment, like food, is precious and life-sustaining, so next time you go to the grocery store, think twice before taking advantage of that convenient two-for-one deal. It may be more costly than you think.

Works Cited

“National Overview: Facts and Figures About Materials, Waste and Recycling.” The United States Environmental Protection Agency.

Nixon, Ron. “Food Waste Is Becoming Serious Economic and Environmental Issue, Report Says.” The New York Times, 25 Feb. 2015.

Sengupta, Somini. “How Much Food Do We Waste? Probably More Than You Think.” The New York Times, 12 Dec. 2017.

Simon, Ben. “What Environmental Problems Does Wasting Food Cause?” Forbes, 18 July 2018.

Taber, Sarah. “Farms Aren’t Tossing Perfectly Good Produce. You Are.” The Washington Post, 8 March 2019.

“Tips to Reduce Food Waste.” The Federal Drug Administration, 15 Nov. 2019.

Yu, Yang and Edward C. Jaenicke. “Estimating Food Waste as Household Production Inefficiency.” American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 23 Jan. 2020.

It Took a Global Pandemic to Stop School Shootings

I despise hearing the lunch bell ring at noon every day. My lunches are permanently scarred with the memory of me sprinting out of the cafeteria, running for my life.

In my freshman year, a gang-related shooting occurred just outside the lunch tables, resulting in the tragic death of a senior. Minutes after the shooting, a student, either as a joke or as a reaction to the event, yelled “Shooter!” in the middle of a crowded cafeteria, resulting in a massive stampede and a lockdown that lasted for what seemed like years, but in reality was a few hours. Although the threat was not directly on campus, the fear was — and it spread faster than the coronavirus.

In March of 2020, when we received notice that we would be subjected to the chaos of a hastily put together online class due to the pandemic, I felt a small core of relief amid the roaring vortex of confusion and negativity inside of me. While I lamented the loss of prom, sports and social interaction, I was secretly grateful: no more traumatizing active shooter drills, no more instinctive searching for exits every time I entered a room, no more running for my life. Despite my isolation, I was safe at home.

During the yearlong lockdown, school shootings dropped to historic levels. In fact, March of 2020 was the first March in 18 years with zero school shootings. Of the 10 total reported school shootings in 2020, five of them occurred in January, before the first mass quarantine.

As we inch closer to achieving herd immunity through vaccinations, schools have begun to reopen, with more students returning to in-person classes. With this steady renewal of prepandemic life comes another indication of normality: gun violence. In 2021, there have already been 17 reported incidents of gunfire on school campuses across the United States, despite most schools still operating at a limited capacity.

No student should have to go to school wondering if they will leave in the afternoon. School is a place for learning, not violence, but our lawmakers and politicians have enabled a society where school shootings are so common, they barely warrant a headline. Even an inept administration with no preventive mask messaging could stumble their way to the fastest vaccine development in the history of modern medicine; yet no administration has been able to brainpower their way to a vaccine for gun violence. So far, the most effective solution to ending school shootings has been a global pandemic that sent the entire world into lockdown. As the Covid-19 pandemic comes to an end, it is time to focus on the true pandemic for the youth of America: school shootings.

Works Cited

Cramer, Maria. “Mass Shootings in Public Spaces Had Become Less Frequent During The Pandemic.” The New York Times, 19 March 2021.

“Gunfire on School Grounds in the United States.” Everytown Research, 12 April 2021.

Maxwell, Lesli, Holly Peele and Denisa R. Superville. “School Shootings in 2020: How Many and Where.” Education Week, 2 March 2021.

Why Singapore’s ‘Ugly’ Buildings Should Be Conserved

If you were to see the Golden Mile Complex in real life, your reaction would probably be something along the lines of “Wow, that building is ugly.” The roughly stamped, varied colors of concrete would strike most people as untidy: a far cry from the modern steel-glass buildings of the financial district just two miles away.

This building has loomed over the vibrant district of Kallang for 48 years. When it was completed, people widely praised it for its stair-like exterior; Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas called it a “unique work.”

Fast forward to 2019: 80 percent of tenants supported the decision to sell the complex to developers, and one politician even called it a “vertical slum.” Pragmatic and aesthetic considerations make it compelling to say that buildings like this should be destroyed. But hear me out, they shouldn’t: There’s certainly more to them than their looks.

The building’s architectural style, Brutalism, became popular in Singapore during the 1970s. Brutalism is well known for its heavy reliance on exposed blocks of concrete and angular shapes, which has garnered polarizing opinions from many. However, the architecture embodies the rapid growth of Singapore during this period, right after the country attained independence in 1965. These buildings reflect the hard work and resilience of that era and have come to represent Singaporean identity itself. Now, many Brutalist structures are under threat: The Pearl Bank Apartments, built in 1976, were demolished last March despite conservation efforts.

I believe that looking at buildings is one of the easiest ways to understand a city’s identity. Two years ago, when I moved to Singapore, I immediately fell in love with the city’s modern architecture and learned how it expressed the island nation’s identity as a high-tech global hub. But there seems to be an obsession with modernity and cleanliness, only creating an artificial veneer of the city. These Brutalist buildings add layers to Singapore’s history. To simply destroy and replace them with new structures would make the city seem shallow.

Moreover, massive urban renovation isn’t only the case for Singapore. Many cities — both Asian and Western — focus too much on redevelopment, sacrificing their heritage for the sake of modernization. Buildings don’t only shape the city’s looks, but also its heritage; more people need to know this. I’ve noticed a similar trend in my hometown, Seoul. The cookie-cutter apartments, while pragmatically sound, take away from the city’s unique atmosphere.

So, you might ask, “What can I do?” Personally, I’m not asking for much. Next time you pass by an “ugly” building, take a moment before you frown. Look at it closely; you might learn something beautiful about where you live.

Works Cited

“Golden Mile Complex to be proposed for conservation, incentives will be offered: URA.” Channel News Asia, 09 Oct. 2020.

Ives, Mike. “‘Box’ or Gem? A Scramble to Save Asia’s Modernist Buildings.” The New York Times, 27 Dec. 2020.

Ives, Mike. “Too Ugly to Be Saved? Singapore Weighs Fate of Its Brutalist Buildings.” The New York Times, 27 Jan. 2019.”

Fast and Furious 2021: Sushi’s Dilemma

Zigzagging around corners, weaving through traffic, every second matters. It is neither a street race nor a 007 chase, but instead the haphazard journey of a sushi roll.

The streets of China have become filled with myriad colorfully clad delivery drivers racing noodles, sandwiches and soups across skyscraper-filled metropolises. While the everyday consumer may find these services convenient, or at worst complain about an over-tossed salad, most do not realize the true cost of their delivery. How much is that late-night snack really worth?

Strict time limits are the main concern for delivery drivers. The Chinese delivery app Meituan decreased the maximum time allowance from the original 50 minutes to 30, and even 20 minutes in certain regions. Time literally means money: Surpassing the limit even once can result in fines (which are paid to the firm rather than compensated to the consumers). Yet, beyond fines, there is often a greater cost. According to Pandaily News, one delivery worker is injured or killed in accidents every 2.5 days solely in Shanghai and, sadly, companies seldom provide insurance claims when their time limits lead to these consequences. Drivers are pushed to break traffic rules and risk their lives so mediocre sushi is not a minute late.

Furthermore, low wages and extensive working hours exacerbate these issues. According to The New York Times, companies in China take advantage of the inherent economic inequities between China’s large cities and less developed interior to offer extremely low compensation to migrant delivery drivers while demanding arduous hours. According to Beijing Jiaotong University and Alibaba, nearly one-quarter of drivers in Beijing work more than 12 hours a day, seven days a week. Yet these long hours and low pay are inherent throughout the global delivery industry. In places like the United States, advertised earnings of $22 per hour are largely exaggerated while workers complain that food delivery apps rarely give them all their tips.

Yet delivery apps and this model are only expanding, in part as a reaction to Covid-19. Under more desperate economic circumstances and with greater demand as people spend more time indoors, Uber alone gained 36,000 new drivers between March and November 2020, while the previous year’s total for all delivery app drivers in the United States was only 50,000.

What is the solution? First, consumers should recognize what is behind their impossibly cheap and fast delivery: exploitation. We should expect more from the delivery app companies and less from their drivers. That is, we should pay more and wait longer while only ordering from companies who are transparent about offering their drivers fair wages, insurance and a safe working environment. In the end, your sushi is just not worth it.

Works Cited

de Freytas-Tamura, Kimiko. “Food Delivery Apps Are Booming, While Their Workers Often Struggle.” The New York Times, 30 Nov. 2020.

Mcmorrow, Ryan. “For Couriers, China’s E-Commerce Boom Can Be a Tough Road.” The New York Times, 31 Jan. 2017.

Sun, Jiayi. “Chinese Food Delivery Platforms Embroiled in Controversy Over Responses to Popular Investigative Story.” Pandaily News, 10 Sept. 2020.

In alphabetical order, by the writer’s last name.

“How American High Schools Failed to Educate Us on Eating Disorders”
By Tala Areiqat, age 17, Northern Valley Regional High School at Old Tappan, Old Tappan, N.J.

Forty-five minutes was deemed an adequate amount of time to supply 12-year-old me — and 20 other tweenagers — with enough information about eating disorders to last us through high school. A documentary shown on a dusty VHS tape, that had obviously been in use since the early 2000s, about two girls suffering from anorexia and bulimia had been my only source for eating disorder awareness for five years. No reflection time followed, no discussion was initiated, and no questions were asked. Because, after all, what could a group of middle school children possibly take away from a decade-old documentary about two teenage girls struggling with anorexia and bulimia?

Flash forward five years — I still know nothing. It wasn’t until I was 16 that I learned (via TikTok) that my daily diet of 1,000 calories barely suffices for a two-year-old, let alone a developing teenager. Despite being educated in a blue-ribbon school in the country’s sixth best county in education, I only had a single image of what an eating disorder looked like: a skin-and-bones teenage girl with sunken eyes. Schools are clearly ill-equipped to educate students on eating disorders and how they can prevent them.

Teenagers have failed to learn about the most common eating disorder in the country because it isn’t taught in many school curriculums: binge eating disorder, or B.E.D. B.E.D. is more common than anorexia, and just as chronic, affecting 2.8 million Americans, including 1.2 percent of all adolescents. Additionally, the National Eating Disorder Association, or N.E.D.A., reports that males make up 40 percent of those with B.E.D., which contradicts the existing notion that only women are affected by eating disorders.

Instead of learning about eating disorders, my junior health class taught me how to count my calories. According to registered dietitian Christy Harrison, “disordered eating patterns began with calorie counting.” Despite this, health classes across the country continue to require students to track their daily calorie intake. Our health classes are teaching us how to develop eating disorders rather than how to prevent them.

Since the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020, the N.E.D.A. saw a 78 percent increase in calls and messages to their hotline, compared to the year prior. More than half of the 83 percent of women texting the hotline were under the age of 17. If conditions are only getting worse for us, why aren’t health classes improving to accommodate this?

Calorie-counting lessons and 45-minute documentaries are not enough to guide teenagers through the most impressionable years of their lives. We need a developed and well-informed eating disorder curriculum. After all, the damage of a seemingly harmless 45-minute video may last someone a lifetime.

Works Cited

Harrison, Christy. “‘It’s the Way We Were All Born Eating.’” The New York Times, 26 Aug. 2019.

Schaeffer, Juliann. “Binge Eating Disorder Statistics: Know the Facts.” Healthline Media, 18 Dec. 2016.

“Statistics & Research on Eating Disorders.” The National Eating Disorder Association.

如果您一直在关注我们举办学生社论大赛的九年，您就会知道，每年春天，我们都会邀请世界各地的初中和高中学生就他们喜欢的任何主题撰写意见文章——只要他们能用 450 字或更少的字数提出论点。

感谢许多接受这一挑战的老师，每年我们都会收到数千篇论文。然而，今年是记录簿上的一年：收到了16，664份提交，比以往任何时候都多了约5，000份。为了考虑所有这些，我们招募了68名评委，他们工作了两个多月和六轮阅读，以选择我们在下面和通过这个列出所有决赛入围者的PDF来表彰的200多名学生。

与往常一样，这些文章提供了一个窗口，让我们了解一代人对他们最关心的问题的看法——无论是影响我们所有人的气候变化和政治功能失调等问题，还是学校着装要求和在当今互联网文化中成长的青少年特定现实。

但是，与往常一样，它们也向我们介绍了新的想法和解决方案。今年的获奖者解释了多代人生活的好处，为什么Z世代应该将农业视为职业，模因如何让年轻人加入全球对话，以及为什么学校需要更加关注数百万混血学生进入课堂。

我们将在下周的专栏中发布最高获奖者和亚军的作品，每个上学日三件。我们希望他们能帮助您以新的方式看待世界。请通过留下您的评论让这些学生知道您的想法。

感谢所有参与的人——我们希望您能参加我们的夏季阅读比赛，该比赛从现在开始一直持续到 8 月 19 日。

（学生注意：我们已经公布了我们获得许可的学生的姓名、年龄和学校。如果您希望发表您的文章，请写信给我们 LNFeedback@nytimes.com。

学生社论比赛获奖者

按字母顺序排列，按作者的姓氏排列。

Endangered Languages Are Worth Saving

Every summer evening at 8 p.m. sharp, my grandma and I plant ourselves in front of the TV. Our next hour is filled with on-screen bouts of amnesia, plotting mothers-in-law, and tearful declarations of love in the rain. But what may seem like ordinary soap opera scenes are far more than melodrama and theatrics: Dialogued entirely in Taiwanese Hokkien, they’re artifacts of a once-dying language.

Linguists expect 90 percent of languages to become obsolete in the next century — and this mass extinction is no accident. Under colonial rule, learning or speaking my grandma’s native Hokkien, along with dozens of indigenous languages, was illegal by law. Schools were forbidden to teach using local dialects; formal institutions shifted to operate by the dominant Mandarin; and homegrown languages, stigmatized as coarse and improper through decades of repression by hegemonic language policies and imperialism, became a marker of backwardness. Today, more than half of native Hokkien speakers no longer use the language at home.

Unfortunately, this tragic silencing isn’t a rare practice. In the 1950s, thousands of Native American children were forced to surrender their mother tongues in boarding schools designed to eradicate indigenous identities. Even now, languages are vanishing at the hands of economic and social power struggles in which smaller communities are pressured to adopt the dominant language that governs work, entertainment and daily life. In fact, California repealed a law requiring “English-only” instruction just four years ago.

But shouldn’t we feel relief that we don’t live in the madness of a Tower of Babel society? While lingua francas undoubtedly streamline global communication, language isn’t solely a tool for business negotiations or celebrity gossip. Steeped in history and heritage, it’s a pillar of culture that built ancient empires, immortalized sacred religious texts, and stockpiled centuries of natural and medicinal wisdom. Records of past civilizations, together with poetry, music and folklore, hinge on a language’s grammatical and syntactic quirks.

The impact of language also spills beyond the past to influence ways of thinking in the present. Have you ever wondered why “death” is feminine in some paintings but masculine in others? It turns out that the gendering of nouns in an artist’s native language plays a role in how he or she decides to bring abstract concepts to life. Beyond art, researchers have also found links between language and perceptions of time, color and emotion.

Documentation projects and protective laws are already on the front lines in the battle against language death — but they won’t have a fighting chance until we realize that pruning a language tree kills more than just words. And if we don’t? Then, our rich forests of linguistic diversity will be flattened into barren wastelands, unable to support the cultures and peoples that once thrived within.

Works Cited

Boroditsky, Lera. “How Does Language Shape the Way We Think?” Edge.org, 11 June 2009.

Casey, Nicholas. “Thousands Once Spoke His Language in the Amazon. Now, He’s the Only One.” The New York Times, 26 Dec. 2017.

Gantt, Amy. “Native Language Revitalization: Keeping the Languages Alive and Thriving.” Southeastern Oklahoma State University.

Sandel, Todd L. “Linguistic Capital in Taiwan: The KMT’s Mandarin Language Policy and Its Perceived Impact on Language Practices of Bilingual Mandarin and Tai-gi Speakers.” Language in Society, 22 Oct. 2003.

Segel, Edward, and Lera Boroditsky. “Grammar in Art.” Frontiers in Psychology, 13 Jan. 2011.

Tesch, Noah. “Why Do Languages Die?” Encyclopedia Britannica.

How Fast Fashion Became Faster — and Worse for the Earth

The spring dance is in two weeks, and my friend needs help choosing a dress. She beckons me to her phone where an endless mosaic of elegant dresses, not one over $20, dances before my eyes. After much deliberation, she settles on a glamorous sapphire gown with pleated details lining the bodice. Another two weeks later, the dress carpets the bottom of a landfill, worn only once.

Welcome to the world of fast fashion.

Fast fashion is a relatively recent phenomenon. During the 1990s, retailers began to introduce trendy, cheaply-priced, poorly-made clothes on a weekly basis, intending to match the breakneck pace at which fashion trends move. Style became cheap, convenient and consumable.

Fast fashion, however, is ultimately a privilege. It is a privilege to buy clothes solely for their style, and it is a privilege to ignore the environmental consequences of doing so. In reality, the aggressive cycle of consumption perpetuated by fast fashion means that the clothes we wear are now more likely than ever to end up as part of the 92 million tons of textile waste produced annually.

During the pandemic, as stores closed, consumers ditched fast fashion staples such as H&M and Zara, instead opting to order from e-commerce social media sensations such as Shein and Asos. (Shein is now valued at $100 billion, more than H&M and Zara combined.) These brands represent an escalation of both fast fashion and its environmental toll.

These fast fashion newcomers thrived during the pandemic because of their unique business models. They exist entirely online, allowing them to ship the thousands of new styles they release daily to consumers directly from their warehouses, avoiding supply chain snags and U.S. import duties in the process. Meanwhile, a reliance on cheap overseas labor and synthetic textiles keeps prices irresistibly low.

These practices, however, are hurting the Earth more than ever before. Because these retailers rely solely on international shipping to move their products, they only exacerbate the annual billion tons of greenhouse gasses released by shipping. Virtually all of these brands sell clothes that contain petroleum-based, resource-intensive synthetic fibers such as polyester and nylon. During their lifetime, these fibers are responsible for 35 percent of the microplastics contaminating our oceans and can subsequently take centuries to decompose in landfills.

Though fast fashion represents an understandably alluring combination of style and savings, now, more than ever, we simply cannot quantify the true cost of our clothing with a price tag. When consumers want to update their wardrobe, they can do so sustainably by thrifting, reworking old garments or researching environmentally-conscious brands.

For now, I’ll be at my next school dance rocking the same dress I did last year.

Works Cited

Beall, Abigail. “Why Clothes Are So Hard to Recycle.” BBC Future, 12 July 2020.

Monroe, Rachel. “Ultra-Fast Fashion Is Eating the World.” The Atlantic, 6 Feb. 2021.

Nguyen, Terry. “Shein Is the Future of Fast Fashion. Is That a Good Thing?” Vox, 13 July 2021.

Okamoto, Katie. “Your Laundry Sheds Harmful Microfibers. Here’s What You Can Do About It.” The New York Times, 21 April 2021.

Saul, Jonathan. “Shipping’s Share of Global Carbon Emissions Increases.” Reuters, 4 Aug. 2020.

Williams, Lara. “Rise of Shein Tests an Industry’s Go-Green Commitments.” Bloomberg, 10 April 2022.