Y'all, I need to vent for a moment, so if you don't want to listen to me whine about capitalism, feel free to ignore this post.
Tumblr keeps showing me Temu ads, and EVERY TIME I'm like, 'oh, that blouse is lovely, I wonder where I can buy- FUCKING TEMU GODDAMN IT GO AWAY!'
I recently went through a sort of, I dunno, minor midlife crisis? (My only child left for college and I'm now having to figure out who I am without the majority of my self-identity focused on being Mom.) And after my hysterectomy I've been losing weight and getting healthier, so I decided I wanted to re-do my wardrobe and lean into the goth elegance that my parents didn't allow me to wear in high school and my kid was embarrassed by in my 20s & 30s.
Do you know how hard it is to find goth/vintage styles of clothing now? I mean, it would be easy if I was willing to buy from companies like SHEIN, I'm sure. But literally every company I find is in one of two categories:
1. Uses slave labor/ non-renewable resources/ fast fashion/ killing people and the environment, or
2. Charges $700 for a skirt that doesn't even have pockets.
And the worst part is this: I can make clothes myself! I have made cosplay outfits for decades. I own 3 working sewing machines. When we bought our new house, one of the biggest selling points was that the unfinished storage room off the basement would be a perfect sewing studio. I have spent THOUSANDS of dollars on fabric and patterns because I honestly believed I would make clothes for myself. So why don't I have a closet full of personalized clothing I made? Because I have ADHD and a bunch of other mental health fun, and I am terrified of unfinished projects. If I can't complete a project in one sitting, the idea of starting *and then willingly stopping and having to start again midway through* makes me nauseous.
Where was this rant going? Oh, right, Temu.
It's infuriating that companies can just straight up lie in advertising with no repercussions. It's infuriating that I have to go online to look at a new vintage-inspired clothing website and immediately wonder, 'Are these AI images? Are they stolen from another company? If I give them money, will they send me a cheap knock-off? Will they send me anything at all?!'
But when I say things like that, I also hear the underlying tone of "Back in my day, we bought clothes in person! There were only 151 Pokémon and we were happy with that!"
It just sucks that we've become a society that accepts lying and cheating from businesses, and that we actively blame victims like "Well, if you didn't research the website first, it's your fault you got scammed." Fuck that! Businesses should be held to a standard and they should be shut down if they lie! Why do we put up with this crap?
(Amazon is not excluded from this rant, but I will get even more upset if I try to go through all the problems with Amazon, so I'm leaving this particular rant more about the industry as a while.)
I just want to give someone a reasonable amount of money and get a quality product in return, and not worry that I'm contributing to global slavery practices or the trash island in the ocean.
It shouldn't be this hard. 😭
