Remember the G8.
Fashion Issue (triangulation)
Quick definitions ( Fashion )
- noun : characteristic or habitual practice
- noun : the latest and most admired style in clothes and cosmetics and behavior
- noun : how something is done or how it happens ( Example: “In an abrasive fashion” )
- verb : make out of components (often in an improvising manner) ( Example: “She fashioned a tent out of a sheet and a few sticks” )
Onelook DIctionary
Scenario:
The G8 is not only the concern of weird people, hippies and who the media decide to portray as trouble makers. That is only what we are meant to think. The G8 concerns us all. Or if it doesn’t it should do.
Maybe it’s because of the way the G8 is usually discussed. Who listens, apart from the died in the wool activist.
Is there a G8 fashion pull-out. How about fashion -something we all care about – even though some of us say we don’t. Lets look at fashion
Probably ninety percent of the time, the people who bring most grief to your life, wear suits. From ugly despots to officials who in the main, seem to be put here to annoy and torment us – wear suits.
Why then are suits seen as a respectable form of dress in our society. I have always found that one really strange.
On the other hand. Who do the media focus on at protest events. People in suits, in designer clothing. No, they will focus on the people with the matted hair, painted faces with “Fuck the state” on their T-shirts. Just like the suited business man, how participants dress at events, is a powerful tactic that is underused and misunderstood by a lot of people, especially in the protest movement.
For instance. Why do people who engage in the pursuit of educating others in the tyrannies of corporate crooks go out of their way to dress so differently from those that they seek to enlighten.
OK because people don’t use the same dress code as yourself, doesn’t mean we have nothing in common. The G8 sponsors make billions of $/£, from the way we dress and know more and study more about the way we look than we do ourselves. It is their job to know such things. Should it be ours. Maybe.
Those who operate within the G8 cartel are happy if people are more concerned about how they dress, than understanding how they are being robbed.
Think about it. A T-shirt, much the same quality, cost £5 another cost £50. How do you manage to sell T shirts for £50 complete with a sponsor of the slave trade emblazoned on the front, to people who hardly make £50 a day wages in this country. This is also an important part of the power and influence of the G8 collective. Why is this fashion thing so important to people.
Propaganda and the influence global markets on peoples lives, through such abstractions as the fashion industry, is used to stimulate the retina and deaden the mind.
Is fashion a tactic
May Day Fashion parade
The catwalk is at the top of Buchanan Street. I spent a bit of time while leafleting last May Day, explaining to passers by on the street, who asked the question. Why do “these” people looked so offensive and scary, “What are these people doing” (their words not mine) pointing toward the throng in the street. I asked whether this particular person, was speaking about the clowns and drum bangers, of the alternative May Day procession, or, the even scarier people in the bright luminous yellow jackets forming a wall that surrounded them. (Strathclyde Police) And to be sure the whole scenario looked scary
This guy said he was involved in the green movement and was doing some eco friendly project, but he didn’t have to dress like that
Ironically enough, the young questioner was wearing fancy branded clothing. After calming him down and explaining what was happening and what the event was about, and part of it is, that we are free to wear whatever we like. I then went on to described his clothing as the most offensive of the lot, and proceed to rant about GAP, sweatshops, corporations and such like.
He looked kind of blank and moved on
To judge how successful G8 members are at control and profiting through how you look. Go to the area in your city that suffers most from poverty, unemployment, bad housing and ask the local young people what looks cool. What will be described to you, in most cases, will be the products and corporate symbols of the very merchandise that makes poor people, everywhere, poorer.
This doesn’t happen because people with little money are stupid. It happens because there is also billions of $/£ spent on convincing folk that this is what should be important to them. It is part the line that government spin to them, with the help of an education system that concentrates on creating fodder for the market in consumption. “Get a good job, buy nice things, rather than do a useful job.
I have no ax to grind about how people dress, but if we are out to win, which hopefully we all are, all avenues need considered and one that concerns me is, people (not involved in the throngs who are absorbed in political discourse) seem to be more concerned about what activists look like, rather than what is their political message.
Fashion is not bad housing, motorways, wars, global warming, but the ramifications of of the fashion market, add to the critical mix of world oppression, that is well documented. But what is not exploited enough is the social impact of fashion and the phycology of how and why we look the way we do – across the whole social spectrim.
Fashion is a tactic.
The G8 is all around us. it is steeped in our institutions our schools our business’s the way we do business, constantly on television, in the news in each and every product we buy consume covet – especially fashion, for a lot of people.
We will not stop the murder of children through letting them starve, because Sir Bob Geldof, puts on a concert. (music/fashion) There is much to be done to counter the inhumanity of the decisions the G8, will make at Gleneagles, which will go on long after Bush et al, pack up their clubs and their deals and go home.
It is after the dust settles, we need to keep going and keep the idea fresh in our heads. The protest needs to continue, not by facing up to police and security guards, but by facing up to the institutions that perpetuate the G8s global control in our society, Banks, Monetary systems, education systems, political systems
We are all fashion victims even if the choice is from the collection at Oxfam or the free rack, at the collective. We are constantly making choices and the choices that we make, even the small ones, collectively make a big difference. If we are concerned about the G8 we must learn to make these choices count for something, even by how we look.
Everyone is involved and everyone can be involved everyone should be involved and everyone contributes whether they like it or not. There is not just goodies and baddies, there is a whole sliding scale in between of confusion, ill informed, propagandized and apathy. We need to use all the tools that are available. So many are ignored, such as fashion, sport and the various pursuits that take up most of the time, of most of the people. Ignore these avenues and we ignore a useful conduit for expressing and explaining ideas.
If expanding the movement for a better world is our goal we need to start to think outside cosy, itellectualising and spectacle, and concentrating on, more common vehicles for discussion. The G8 is not just for Christmas. When the mass protest ends we need to carry the spirit of resistance to out workplace and in our daily lives and more importantly to the people who suffer most from it – and through topics that are part of their lives -even the ones we find so distasteful.
When people are left out of the equation, or do not fit into it, or have any influence in the debate, they will pride themselves in what they look like. Sometimes that is all they have, or all what is accessible to them. Only the privileged can feel cool in the tat of a dosser, because they can step back into other realities, images and diversions when the mood takes them. And the privileged are the most fashion conscience of them all, that’s why they are so easily told apart. That and their utter disdain for the fashion of the under privileged.