thoughtcrime blog
Background Color: a bang-on indictment of racialized fashion
Our friend Dawn Babs Davenport gave us the heads up on a thoughtful, must-read article by Mimi on ThreadBared (a weblog that critiques “the politics of fashion”). The article discusses a ‘racialized’ photo shoot in trendy fashion rag Nylon. The Nylon photo spread seems to represent an emerging way of being “edgy” in mainstream capitalist fashion that many are catching on to, of explicitly playing up racial inequality like you just couldn’t care less.
This may seem like nothing new (readers of No Logo and Adbusters might remember discussion of Diesel ads from the mid-90s). “Slumming it” always seems to be recurringly fashionable. But in the case of the Nylon shoot, the indifference is carried through to the likely drafting an unwilling model (in this case, a housekeeper) and being well aware (and not giving a shit) that the worker knows they have to do it or likely lose their job. (“Hey, we can do this because we’re hipsters at Nylon and you’re nothing.”)
While we at thoughtcrime ink ponder the implications of this for our own present and future “model photography” for our shirts (we definitely don’t want our highlighting of this article to be taken as saying ‘look at us, aren’t we so perfect or immune to critique’), here is the article on Threadbared.
posted Thursday, July 31, 2008 by Rob Butz | add a comment
Prison Justice Day, August 10
Prison Justice Day is a day dedicated to demystify the untruths propagated about prisoners and the “justice” system.
The aim of the prison abolition movement is to eliminate prisons, jails, immigration detention centers, and prisoner of war camps by alternatives which we argue more useful and more humane.
Come join us for a day of awareness featuring:
Vegan Food
Films, including: One Dead Indian, and Life Inside Out: Life inside a Women’s Prison
Workshops on Books to Prisoners, Prison Abolition, Know Your Rights and more!
Benefit Show to follow at 6:30 ($5-10 sliding scale)
Tabling Welcome!
Date/Time: Aug. 10, 2008 - 11am - 7pm
Event Location: Ukrainian Center 11018 97 Street (Near the Stadium LRT station and the 140 and 3 bus routes)
Event Admission: by donation
More info: email .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) for more information
