Disposable diversity.
Yuck, I hate it here sometimes. Today I look at how modelling agencies are “talent scouting” for ethnic looking models (to meet their European fashion week “diversity targets”) in Kenyan refugee camps. Once “selected” the young girls are packed off to Europe and paraded around - incurring sizeable debts to their “benefactors” along the way. If they’re not successful on the EU scene, they’re sent back to where they came from.
Predatory diversity like this, that uses young women’s bodies to placate and persuade a credulous rich target market of aesthetic (yet disposable) brand virtue, needs a name.
It reminds me of current news where women’s bodies are also used as disposable public relations and propoganda tools by media and nations as well as fashion houses to win people over to their causes and sides.
It also reminds me of AI generated “models of colour” that exploit diversity as a window dressing without investing in it.
It all makes me feel awful- about the brands that perpetuate this behaviour, and the consumers who are impressed / fooled by it.
What does this say about society’s skin deep values?
About how we price and value women?
About how identity has become a commodity?
About the hollowness of 2D corporate equity and diversity that (like ESG) looks “good” on paper but is anything but in reality?
And how do we call this accounting without accountability to account?
Read more
Shopping for girls in refugee camps : https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/modelling-agencies-recruit-refugees-sudan-camp-3tm229v0d
Disposable diversity