Dark truths laid bare about H&M’s feminist clothing ads
H&M’s new viral video ad, heralded by the Huffington Post as a “badass,” “feminist” redefinition of “ladylike,” opens onto a full-bodied woman in her underwear, walking away from the camera, into a bathroom.
Once inside, the woman doesn’t avoid the gaze of the mirror above the sink or pinch the skin at her sides; instead she does her hair with confidence and swagger. All the while, a sultry, female-sung rendition of Tom Jones’s 1971 hit, “She’s a Lady,” plays in the background (a song the Huffington Post deemed “misogynistic” in its original form).
Next we see a wide variety of H&M-clad ladies do things likely never done before in a fashion ad. A group of mixed race friends dine out at a fancy restaurant and laugh their heads off as a little white girl observes them curiously from a distance.
An Asian businesswoman appears to lay down the law at a boardroom table full of dudes; a white woman in a long dress “manspreads” on a subway car; a skinny teenager with pink hair and hairy armpits unzips her jeans and eats French fries on a bed.
The ad is earnest but it’s also artful. At first watch, it’s a beautifully shot, welcome departure from the fashion status quo.
Its inherent message, “We are H&M and we love you just as you are, even if our previous ad campaigns suggest a singular fondness for emaciated cool people,” is on the surface, a positive one.
In the words of the brand’s Canadian spokeswoman, Emily Scarlett, who gave a statement to the Star via email, “we want to celebrate diversity and encourage women around the world to be who they truly are.
“We don’t take a religious or political stand, but we want to show H&M is all about inclusiveness and diversity.”
Upon closer inspection though, the Swedish retailer’s new inclusive stance does beg the question: What if you happen to be one of those women around the world whose job it is to produce garments for the brand?
What if you aren’t an unconventional beauty in North America or Europe who likes to shop at H&M (and thus, a person who might appreciate its new inclusive stance) but a pregnant woman in India or Cambodia who happens to craft the clothes that find their way into our closets?
I hate to make this argument, because it always comes off as cynical (after all, can’t somebody just do something good for once without there being a catch?) but it must be made regardless. The notion that H&M and companies like it care in any meaningful sense about feminism is pretty rich when you consider how the women who produce their garments are treated — or mistreated — at work.
According to a study called “Precarious Work in the H&M Global Value Chain,” released earlier this year by the Asia Floor Wage Alliance, “workers from 11 out of the 12 H&M supplier factories surveyed reported either witnessing or experiencing termination of employment during pregnancy.” And workers at nine out of 12 Cambodian factories surveyed in the report said they experienced sexual harassment on the job.
To make matters worse, efforts by a mostly female workforce to unionize or ask for better treatment in dead-end contract positions were, according to the report, predominantly squelched.
In H&M’s defence, Scarlett says all the cases in the aforementioned report “have been investigated” and the brand “found no evidence of these incidents” taking place.
As well, she says, “all suppliers mentioned in the report have clear policies and routines to minimize the risks of these practices occurring.”
In addition to this, Scarlett reports that H&M is working with the International Labour Organization on a project that will strengthen “the dialogue between workers and management in Cambodia.”
And yet, the brand’s attempt to foster discussion among low-wage workers and management doesn’t eliminate the possibility that its allegedly feminist ad campaign may paint a picture of an inclusive world that is drastically different from the one inhabited by the women workers who produce its garments.
It also doesn’t distract from the reality that so many of us in the West have a tendency to uncritically embrace feminist messaging by brands whose labour practices may be far from egalitarian.
In fact, the mere possibility that H&M mistreats garment workers renders the company’s image of old — i.e. the glorification of emaciated cool chicks — far easier to swallow than its current oh-so-progressive one.
But it also reveals a sad truth, discussed at length by Bitch Media co-founder Andi Zeisler in her recently published book We Were Feminists Once, that the commercialization of feminism by brands and celebrities has produced a preoccupation with the language and images of feminism, but not necessarily with the activism necessary for material change.
This is the same brand of feminism, I’d add, that cares more about symbolism than results: that would rather ban the supposedly “rapey” Robin Thicke song “Blurred Lines” from college radio stations than offer Rohypnal-detecting nail polish to female students during frosh week.
The kind of feminism that rebukes Tom Jones for a sexist song he wrote in 1971, but has only kind words for corporations accused of treating meagrely paid women workers like dirt.
The kind of feminism, in other words, that has its head in the clouds. Emma Teitel is a national affairs columnist. Her column appears Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.