Hey y'all. This has been getting under my skin for a while now but it's come to a head in the last few days. I'd love to hear your perspective.
I have long been looking for a good US-based sustainable jeans company to support (that's not Everlane) for a while now. It's hard to find. When I found out about Boyish I was super excited- a sustaible denim co from LA? Awesome! I went to their website and was surprised to discover that they feature only extremely tall/thin models. This was disappointing to say the least but I thought, whatever. Then I discovered that they do not list the fit info for their jeans, just the length. So they don't show you what the jeans look like on curvier women and they don't list the fit for different sizes...How am I supposed to know how the jeans are going to fit?? They're online only!
So I went to their IG to see if I could find more info, and maybe some examples of non-supermodels wearing their jeans. To my dismay, their feed consists literally 100% of size 0-2 models. I scrolled back for hundreds and hundreds of posts, and there was perhaps ONE single post that featured a woman larger than a size 2 (and she was maybe a 4/6). Something else became quite evident to me during my scrolling too- they have a MAJOR diversity problem. Going back about 100 posts I did not see ONE. SINGLE. BLACK. WOMAN. Well, perhaps one of their more recent posts maybe could possibly have been a black woman but they showed about 4 inches of her torso and none of her face. At around post 90 there was one woman who might be mixed but it's hard to tell. There were a small handful of Asian/Latina girls mixed in but the vast majority (~80%) were white, white, WHITE white white. I was shocked. Shocked.
I switched over to their tagged posts- it was more of the same. It was also extremely curated, leading me to believe that they are clearly untagging themselves from "off-brand" posts. Row after row after row of skinny white women, hardly a skin tone darker than "medium". I was just disgusted.
Looking back through the posts they have received consistent if mild criticism regarding their lack of diversity in both size and color, and their response has always been "we're working on it <3". On 5/31 as all other sustainable brands that I follow were making statements regarding the BLM movement and what actions they are taking, Boyish continued to make post/stories featuring their products and white women instead. They received backlash for this and for their lack of diversity and insensitivity but did not respond.
The next day 6/1 they made a post saying simply "We are heartbroken and saddened by the current events. Boyish has always been an equality brand of all people on Mama Earth, regardless of race, color, ethnicity, sexual orientation or gender". This was not particularly well-received as glossed over the criticism of their exclusion of WOC and their insensitivity. They also did not actually reference the BLM movement or take any action (donation, links to specific organizations, etc). Furthermore, "equality for all" is not the issue, this is a blacks-specific issue and shoule be treated as such.
6/2 (yesterday) they posted a blackout tile with the title "Listening, # BlackLivesMatter". They were asked to delete the post as the IG algorithm has been driving large white corporation's voices with the BLM # on black tiles to the top, drowning out those with actual valuable information ands input, which continues even after the # has been changed. They did not do so and continued to not acknowledge the comments from the last few days.
Overall I'm just extremely disappointed with their behavior. Their exclusion of WOC demonstrates an obvious implicit bias at best, and is flagrantly racist at worst. Their milquetoast attempts to hand-wave the accusations of racism away feel pandering. The only "equality" Boyish has demonstrated is their even-handedness at taking our money. Abercrombie and Fitch CEO Mark Jeffreys was widely criticised in 2012 for intentionally excluding people from the brand who were too "fat", too "uncool" or too "unamerican". To quote Jeffreys, " Good-looking people attract other good-looking people, and we want to market to cool, good-looking people... A lot of people don't belong [in our clothes], and they can't belong." Boyish has shown us who they believe "good looking people" are, and who they think "belong" in their jeans, and it's not WOC and it's not anyone over a size 2. It makes me sad.
We need to hold sustainble corporations to a higher standard. Racism and sustainability go hand-in-hand. We cannot claim to care about the lives of people in third-world countries while contributing to systemic violence here. We should be recruiting everyone possible to the sustainable fashion force, not excluding them by saying they're not "on-brand" enough. Now is not the time to let racism slide- now is the time to speak up!
I have action items for Boyish if they really want to change. They are as follows.
1) STOP posting to social media. They need to stop talking and start listening.
2) Mandatory company-wide implicit bias training. This includes the CEO, the marketing team, the VP's, everyone.
3) The hiring of POC, not just models but in all levels of their business, including in their executive, marketing, design and PR teams.
4) Contacting experts in the field, BLM leaders, and their peers in the sustainable fashion industry to find out how they can do better.
5) Donations to the BLM cause or other organizations supporting POC
6) Once this is completed, then and only then they should return to social media and make a sincere apology and openly address the concerns that have been raised surrounding their lack of diversity and the specific changes they will be making. No tokenism "Look at this one black member we have on staff", actual change.
7) The change. Real, actual change. A dramatic shift in what we see on their feed and in their behavior.
Until then I will NOT be supporting Boyish Jeans and will be taking my money elsewhere.
Tl;Dr Boyish Jeans feature exclusively thin women, and almsot exclusively white women, with the near-complete exclusion of black women. They have responded extremely poorly to these criticisms and have made delayed and half-hearted responses to pressure to comment on the BLM movement. Racism and exclusion has no place in sustainable fashion!
Submitted June 03, 2020 at 02:30PM by pellmellmichelle https://ift.tt/2XYsePF
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