Portrait of a Textile Worker

[pne]

Go have a look at this entry in being_homeless's journal.

It's about a woman making a quilt out of clothing labels, depicting a textile worker in Bangladesh who gets paid nearly nothing to produce clothes Westerners wear.

Comments

[bride.livejournal.com]

Tommy Hilfiger, Calvin Klein, Eddie Bauer, Liz Claiborne, Walt Disney

I avoid name brand clothing on principle. They do stinkingly well without my business and they don't need my hard earned money.

I am clothed just fine with the very same fabric, assembled in the very same way. My clothes last me a long long time despite the "quality" scare tactics ("if it's not a $100 t-shirt from some famous designer, the will fall apart in three months"; "if it's not a Prada, it can catch on fire and burn your house down").

Imitations are, hands down, way funnier... "OKNY" (DKNY im., it was a very square 'O' =D), "ELLF" (ELLE im.), "CK (Callister Killenger)" BWAHAHA!!! XD

Not sure if I want to open this can of worms, but I wonder if people have the same attitudes about software that is outsourced to other countries where people are paid "next to nothing". I know the same ideas from textile don't apply straight across to software, but it makes for an interesting discussion. I can only hope that Open Source will at least be able to balance that off.

[bicoherent.livejournal.com]

If I'm not wrong, people's response to outsourced software are somewhat intertwined with racist attitudes, and besides most open source projects are started by Westerners. :-| The thinking is, these goods aren't just cheap, they're produced by inferior peoples living in squalid conditions who are forever doomed to be code monkeys. So I doubt the Open Source movement will change the way people see outsourcing.

Besides, even if that attitude changes, the fact remains that the actual workers are paid peanuts....