Adulting - #92 Consumerism, Colonialism & Money Management with Aja Barber

Episode Date: January 24, 2021

Hey Podulters, happy Sunday & I hope you’re well. In this week’s episode I speak to Aja Barber, about the three things she wishes she had been taught in school, namely; that consumption is a trap, the history of colonisation and how it effects people today, and how to manage money. Aja is a writer and fashion consultation who specialities in writing about sustainable fashion and helping you to buy better! She also has a book coming out later on this year. I loved speaking to Aja and I really hope you enjoy listening 💘as always, please do rate, review and subscribe! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When a body is discovered 10 miles out to sea, it sparks a mind-blowing police investigation. He's one of the most wanted men in the world. This isn't really happening. Officers finding large sums of money. It's a tale of murder, skullduggery and international intrigue. So who really is he? I'm Sam Mullins and this is Sea of Lies from CBC's Uncover. Available now on CBC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts. school, namely that consumption is a trap, the real history of the world and colonization and

how to manage money. Aja is a writer and a fashion consultant who specializes in writing about sustainable fashion and helping you buy better. She also has a book coming out later on this year. I love speaking to Aja and I really hope you enjoy listening. As always, please do rate, review and subscribe. Bye. Hello and welcome to Adulting. Today I'm joined by Aja Barber. Hi there. How are you? I'm good. Thank you. How are you doing? Well, it's January and we are still in lockdown and the world appears to be a dumpster fire going downstream. But besides that, I'm great. I'm dandy.

You know, it's funny because it's like, it's definitely a how are you today kind of time because I feel like my mood fluctuates so much more at the minute than it ever did before. I'm never consistent, even if that's hour to hour, it's very much up and down. Well, so I always struggle during this time of year. I do suffer from some depression. And so this time of year is extremely hard for me. But it's always hard regardless of what's happening. And right now it's just like, ah, you know, like I, I, I'm just want to say I'm holding space for you. If you're struggling as well, do not feel like you are alone at all in this. Like it's, we take each day one step at a time. And this is a particularly rough time period within our entire life basically how have you

if you've suffered for a long time have you got better at sort of managing it and like because I love the way you're so forthcoming when we put this in you're like I'm going through kind of like a depressing time so I want to you know I do this I found that I love it when people are really open about what mood they're in or what how they're feeling um um it's it's like clockwork for me I think for me it's easier to manage when I know to expect it I remember being a teenager and just sort of being like why do I feel like this and like not knowing and now that I'm an adult you know yourself better you know when to sort of anticipate you know to batten down the hatches at times. But nobody could have seen this global pandemic coming or, you know,

America's politics being weird or the UK just, I mean, we were literally dealing with, you know, Brexit, a pandemic, et cetera. And I'm American, but I live in London. So it's like everywhere you look, there's kind of just like bad news. And so I just, I knew to expect my own sort of dip in emotions, but no one could have prepared us for this, you know? No, completely. I mean, God, you just don't know what's coming from the day to the next day. But before we get into like a bit more of the chat, I wondered if you could give us an introduction, um, to your work and who you are. Yeah. So my name is Aja Barber. Um, I am American. I'm from Virginia. I live outside of my parents live outside of DC, but I'm based in London and I write about sustainable and ethical fashion, but specifically through the lens of intersectionality

and, you know, how all of these systems are really connected and how, you know, the things that we talk about in this space and that space can actually be applied to how we consume, how we're pressured to consume, who we consume from, who's making the most amount of money, who's getting our trash dumped on them in the global South. And so I basically use the framework that great feminists and environmentalists before me have laid out. And I package it in a way that people can start to sort of sink their teeth into on Instagram. And I also run a Patreon where people get a daily discussion over there as well. I really believe that these problems that we're seeing within the fashion industry, it's really amped up in the last 20 years.

And if it's happened in that short of a timeframe, we can reverse a lot of it, but we need to look at it from all sides. It can't just be, okay, we're going to do this one thing. It has to be a real overhaul of the system and it has to be a holistic approach. And so I write about that daily. That leads us in perfectly to your first thing that you wish you were taught in school. You said the first thing is that consumption is a trap. Being made fun of for your clothes ropes you in early as a consumer and schools don't dissect this I'd never really thought about that first bit so it just brought back so many memories of how much

as a child what you're wearing is super important you forget that that becomes like a really big part of how people treat you I wonder if you could go into this a bit more and I'd love to know when you started to kind of interrogate your own relationship with clothes and where that came from and how your relationship with consumerism in general has changed over time. Yeah. So the area that I grew up in is super affluent, like one of the probably top 10 wealthiest places in America. And my family was lower middle class, but we were still middle class, you know, but I felt very poor throughout my childhood, because I felt like the peers that were around me had more, they lived in bigger houses, they had all of the right clothing. And so my first interest in fashion came from a place of absolute need. I needed to fit in

through material items. And my mother who grew up like within poverty basically was not into it at all. So those were like my first fights with my mom was over my clothing. And from that sort of need came an actual interest in the fashion industry. It started out with, I want the right clothes. And then it was like, well, hang on. This is actually a really interesting subject. It's an interesting topic. And I've always loved clothing, even if it was bags of hand-me-downs from people outside

of our family. I used to get a lot of hand-me-downs from, you know, people outside of our family. I used to get like a lot of hand-me-down clothing from like older kids. And it was really magical sometimes opening those bags and not knowing what you're going to see. So I've always been interested in clothing, but the lens in which I've interacted with, with the clothing has changed depending on my station in life. So like, obviously when I nine, and I got made fun of for my clothes, that changed something. When somebody said to me, do you wear the same thing every day, that changed something in my head. So there were these very specific moments within my childhood, and maybe being a teenager, where all of a sudden, I was interacting with consumption and garments and

clothing, based off of basically having my self esteem wounded, you know, and being hurt and not feeling like I had the right things. And if I had the right things, that would mean that these people that weren't nice to me would treat me better, newsflash, they never would. And so from all of this, I kind of started to think about the ways in which consumption really does trap you. And I mean, even when I was a teenager, like, they start sending you credit cards in America, like as early as they possibly can. Wow. Yeah, no, they and they solicit as well, like college campuses. As a matter of fact, I believe Barack Obama had a law where credit card companies couldn't do that anymore.

So the first year that you move into like your uni dorm, you've literally got fraternities going around offering to sign you up for a credit card. Now, these are people that have absolutely no money management skills, like 18 year olds who have never been outside of their parents house. And all of a sudden, somebody is offering them a candy bar or water bottle if they just sign up for this credit card, you know, so there's all these ways I credit cards started arriving to my house, when I was a teenager, and my mother would shred them before I got home from school. I didn't even realize that this was happening because she knew it was a trap. But we need to

talk about this stuff in school. Kids need to understand how money works because there's not enough of that conversation from the go. And financial literacy is something that a lot of people have to figure out on their own feeling about in the dark but why can't we just talk about this in schools instead and teach people how to pay their taxes this is we're gonna we're definitely gonna come on to the money things i know that's that's your last thing isn't it i think that's your yeah your third one but i kind of bled into that yeah no no that, that's fine. I want to come back to the credit card thing because that definitely doesn't happen in the UK. I still don't have a credit card to this day, which I mean, I'm 26,

maybe I should get one. But back to the kind of like consumption idea, if I'm being completely transparent, this pandemic has made me fall into bad habits of wanting to buy things for that quick kind of like serotonin boost. So I've been ordering like candles and picture frames and like stuff that isn't, it's not closed. So it's hopefully never going to go to landfill because it's stuff that I'm going to have in my home. But even then I found myself really falling for wanting some kind of emotional stimulation. And I found myself going to shop. And I wondered when, because you take a quite an academic lens as well to the way that you look at our relationship with consumption. When did you start to look at shopping and I guess capitalism more

broadly with this academic angle? And how did that framework kind of help you to strip away any emotional relationship with consumerism? Because I think that's the difficulty is we're so emotionally invested in buying because we've been brought up to believe shopping is therapy, you know? When I was in my 20s, and I used to be a massive fast fashion consumer. So I never, I never leave the conversation from a place of shame because like, who am I to be like, oh, I can't believe we're still buying that way. No, I know exactly what it feels like to be in that cycle. And so I think it was in my 20s, where like have to sneak my shopping into the house sometimes, like leave it in the car, wait until your mom goes to bed and then bring your shopping in. Like, what are you doing?

But on top of that, I began to realize that I was buying to fill a hole, whether I was feeling insecure, whether I was feeling unhappy, whether I was feeling unloved, I was always sort of soothing these things with consumption. And I wasn't doing anything for myself, except buying stuff I didn't need, wouldn't want in six months, and then would feel super guilty. When I've got these piles of clothing that I'm going to donate to a charity, which can only, you know, use 10% of what they receive, and then the rest gets landfilled or dumped in the global South. So I began to realize that these systems weren't great. There were certain brands, where I would just be like, what are people doing? You know, even like as a consumer myself,

there was one brand who I won't name, but let's just say I've always been 38 at heart and never quite 21 was born middle-aged. But I remember being like, I just can't do it. It's too cheap. Like this clothing does not look good on me. I, I bought one thing and it pretty much fell apart in the wash. And I began to actually look at it from like an economic standpoint. That was the first thing I began to realize, like, something that is so linear, that it has no value after a couple of washes is a bad investment of your money. You know, I began to realize that the items that I had spent a little bit more on, whether it was like the Marc Jacobs top that I found in an outlet, I could wear that top. And if my mind ever changed or I grew out of it because our bodies change as well, I could put that top on eBay and resell it and I could make back some of the money. And so part of me began to really quantify fast fashion as essentially trash because

nobody actually wanted that much of it at the end of its life cycle with you. And so that was the first thing was I was just looking at my pocketbook and realizing that I literally felt like I was throwing my money away. My great grandmother, Catherine Beasley, she used to be a full-time, very committed smoker. And she did not quit smoking because it was bad for you. That would have been one of the reasons too. She quit because she said she saw her money going up in flames. And that was pretty much how I envisioned fast fashion. It was just, this is an epic waste of my money. And once you sort of start to sort of take a break from that system, when you go back into a store, you see it more clearly.

Like when you're in the constant cycle of buying like once a week or whatever, it just feels normal. All of this is so normalized, like paper thin fabrics, garments that don't last very long, like this is normal. But when you take off a week or two, and you go back, you're just like, wait, why am I spending so much money on this? Another thing that happened was one year, I actually did track my purchases. And I remember adding up all of my receipts from one particular store, H&M, and feeling completely grossed out. Because that is a company that is owned by a billionaire. And here I am living in my parents' basement, not even making enough money to get myself out of this scenario because

we're in a bad economy. And I've had to live through three different recessions and joblessness has been very, very on the peripheral of my adult life. And I'm giving tons of money to someone who has more money than they can spend in a lifetime. But another thing that happened for me was I volunteered in a charity shop in my local charity shop where my mom does most of her shopping because she always thought fast fashion was a waste of money. And I hate how right she was about that. But one summer I volunteered there because one of my neighbors runs a summer camp for kids who are affected by poverty, basically. And some of the kids don't show up with the right footwear. And so one of the things that they always need is children's sneakers. So I sort of struck a deal with this local charity shop. I'll volunteer a few days a week, can I take all your children's sneakers

and give them to this charity? And they were like, sure. And working in that charity shop blew my mind because this is one local small charity shop. And every day I felt like I always use the analogy of Prometheus getting his guts ripped out because you'd be opening these bags of clothing, some of it gently used, barely used, and you'd be going through it and you would think that you got to the end of the pile. And then when you finish that, just more bags just kept coming in. I'm thinking, this is one charity shop out of probably, you know, hundreds and thousands of charity shops in America. And it is just a never ending mountain of clothing. And we can't even sell all of it. We, you know, we have different rating system, like perfect goes on the floor, you know, less than perfect

goes to this charity shop, yada, yada, yada, yada. And then like, it still wasn't enough to, you know, just there was, I was just thinking, what are we doing with all this clothing? What on earth? Why have we become this society? So that was a real mind blowing experiment. And it also made me not want to consume like when I would finish working there for a few hours every week, I would always go to the mall and be like, nah, that's going to end up in a charity shop where someone like me is going to be screaming at the ceiling. You can't get rid of the mountain of clothing that just keeps replenishing itself overnight. So all of these sort of different experiences led me to really sort of want to look deeper at these systems, want to watch more documentaries. And I never

worked in fashion full time because it's a really challenging industry. It's an industry that has its own internalized class system because, you know, one of the things that the industry is known for is internship and free labor. And for someone like me who doesn't have the security of, you know, financially affluent parents who can just bail me out and pay my bills. I was never going to be the type of person that could do five different unpaid internships in various cities and manage to stay afloat. I just couldn't do it. I did a few. And I learned a lot during that time period. But I also was really fed up with the ways in which the system constantly promoted people who were already privileged while also claiming that fashion is this democratic landscape that anyone

can succeed and play in. That is factually untrue. And I began to also write about race separately. It was the era of Barack Obama and living in America, it was like, all of a sudden, all of the stuff that we try and sweep under the rug in our society just came bubbling straight to the top, like some sort of yucky soup. And so I felt like I had never really wanted to write about race, because it's not always fun. It's not fun at all. But I felt like I could not not write about it. So I was writing about race and feminism and column A. And then in column B, I was writing about like fashion and frivolous stuff that I liked. And then I began to be like, why do I have columns for all of these? Like, quite frankly, if we're being really honest,

like most of our country is made in the global south by black and brown people. And most of the clothing that is being consumed is being consumed in the north by a lot of different people, but mostly white people, if we're honest. And then when we're done with it, we give it to a charity, we dump it back on the global south. And coincidentally, the global south is already seeing the effects of climate emergency. And so we've literally created this system through hundreds and hundreds of years of colonization, where we use certain people's resources and labor forces to create these systems, which we then trap ourselves in and we can't, we feel like we can't get out. But I think it's actually essential to all of us rethinking how we get out of these systems in order to free ourselves and to save our planet. It's such a good answer. I'm just taking all that in. It's fascinating to hear you talk about it, because I think for me, my own personal journey with fast fashion actually didn't start until um I went to university because before that

it was actually my mum especially would hate things that were really thin fabrics and she'd always talk about getting quality stuff and we actually used to buy a lot of like secondhand or vintage clothes and it wasn't until Instagram really started to take off when I was at uni that cheap clothes became fashionable because of the idea of photo sharing what you're wearing whereas before you know you weren't constantly taking a picture of what you're wearing every day but it became that every time you went on a night out you had to have a new outfit and that would often be like a pretty little thing stretchy dress which costs six pounds and as you say would be falling apart that seems within a matter of a matter of wears

but essentially if you sew things you also know that fabric you know whatever that dress is made out of the fabric itself probably should have cost it more than six pounds which means that the dress costs six pounds how on earth was anyone paid to make that well exactly but I mean at this age I was like 19 I just wasn't interrogating things and as a student as well like you don't have that much money so you're like oh my god this is amazing and that that's the hard thing it kind of preys on people as well who need access to cheaper garments and then it kind of um I don't know it's kind of sickening and it's really difficult because now I still love fashion but I try to do things like renting or buying secondhand.

But I'm still part of the problem because on Instagram, I'm constantly showing my outfits, even if my outfit isn't new or it's sustainable. I'm still part of this thing where people are constantly wanting to have more clothes. Like, how do you find it in your lifetime of working in this kind of field? How has Instagram and social media exacerbated the problem? But on the other hand, with people like you being voices of a movement towards a more greener ethical attitude towards consumerism, how do you think those two marry up? I totally said this recently and it hit me like a ton of bricks. Fast fashion has obviously become the thing in the last like 20 years, and it actually sort of shares the same linear path as social media. And so the connection there is rife, like it's, it's so there's so many

elements to the story where all of a sudden, it just like drops on you like a ton of bricks. And you're like, Oh, my God. But yeah, if you really look at when brands started to speed up and when seasons started to speed up and you look at, you know, the popularity of Facebook and Instagram and blogging, it's a real linear path. And so I, I, oh my goodness, something just arrived for me in a cupcake bag. But I, it hard because we're all trapped in the system. And I'm not shaking my finger at anyone. For me, another realization I had was I did start sewing in my 20s. I used to be that person that would go into a charity shop and I would go into like a store that I couldn't afford and be like, oh, that dress costs $98.

And some of the prices in some of the stores are inflated because they're not paying garment workers well or whatever. And then I go, oh, I could make that myself. And so I would go to like the fabric store. I would root around at the discount fabric pile and like find the right fabric. And usually that would be like two or three yards and so I would probably pay about eight or nine dollars for the fabric you know ten dollars and that's scrap fabric that's not like the stuff on the bolt that's like full price and then I take it home and then I would proceed to try and make what I saw at the store. And it was always awful. Like, there were a few things that I made where I was just like, okay, this is wearable. There were a few dresses that I really nailed,

even though they clearly had like, absolute like bits that were wrong about them, but only I knew that they were wrong. They looked fine on, but some of those things I made were awful. And I began to realize, oh my God, there's a reason people should be paid fairly for this job because it's not easy. And we do do a thing in our society where we devalue the labor of anyone who isn't in like science, math, or medical. You know what I mean? Like, we'd love to be like, to a graphic designer, oh, why, why do you charge me for that? And people will say, like, well, you know, I charge you this price, because, you know, they said it took you 15 minutes to do that. They're like, yeah, but it took me 15 years to learn how to do it in 15 minutes. You know,

and so we do have a society where people walk into art museums and go, I could do that. Okay, but you didn't, you know, and you're invested in this company, and you really understand what they're going for, there's a real connection there, we have no emotional connection to our clothing, we don't even think about the fact that someone's fingers made that garment. And that disconnect is what sort of pushing us all to consume the way we've consumed, you know, because if we really thought about every item we wear and how hard someone worked on it, I think we would have a much different attitude and approach towards clothing. So how, how do you, as someone that did, that obviously still loves clothes and loves fashion, how have you, what is your resolution? Have you really committed to thinking that actually you just don't need,

you do not need anything else and you can just prepare and keep and enjoy the things you have? Or do you ever indulge in purchasing something? How has your attitude reached its evolution that you wanted to get to? Yeah. So I basically went cold turkey for a while. One of the things I always tell people this, if you're looking to like really, you know, cut down your consumption move, because I've moved several times as an adult. And each time I move, I want to throw away everything I own. Each time I just think gross materialism is God's punishment for consumption. Like I've literally, there's always a moment where I'm sitting at the floor thinking, just throw it all away, you know?

And so every time I move, I remember those moments, and especially when it comes to clothing and wardrobe. And I live in London, obviously, but my partner is English. I'm American. I moved here. we got married. When I moved here, I had to get rid of like 75% of what I owned. And I had collected like a full adult's life worth of stuff. But additionally, I had changed in shape, I had changed in body. I have uterine fibroids. So like my waist area is bigger than it's ever been. And, you know,

I just realized it was really time for a clean sweep, but I had to do it in a way where I didn't want to end up dumping tons of stuff on charity. I wanted to make sure to thoughtfully, you know, release myself of these items. So what that looked like was basically a year before I moved over here, I started going through stuff, I started giving things away to friends, I anything that could be resold, I would try and sell it. That's a full time job in itself. I would give things away to friends if they wanted it. And I basically tried to thoughtfully find homes for everything that I owned. And it is impossible. So in doing that journey, I was just thinking, I'm never going to amass this amount of stuff again. I'm never going to amass this amount of stuff again, whether

it be clothing, shoes, books, I can excuse because you can always sort of pass off a book to another owner. But it really got me thinking about all the stuff that I felt anchored to the United States with. And some of it is still in my parents' basement. Every time I go home, I basically spend a day and go through a drawer or go through, you know, a bunch of items and try and decide what to do. But moving is very effective for you. And when I moved here, I also couldn't work until I got my settlement visa. So you come here and you get married, and then you have to apply for the settlement visa, which my visa is up again in April, already excited about that

process. And so you're not working because you can't work. And so you can't shop. And so that time period, you know, even though I had saved a bunch of money to live here, you obviously want to be careful with your money. You know, we have basically one income. And so I had to be very, very mindful about stuff because I couldn't be like, I'm just going to pop to the shops and spend a hundred pounds on clothing I don't need, even though I don't have a job right now. And so I was very, very mindful during that time period of how I was spending money. And, you know, for me, a luxury during that time period was being able to take ballet classes at Central School of Ballet in London. You know,

that's, that's, I had to refigure how I look at luxury, basically, and what's considered luxurious to me, I consider luxury going to like, TK Maxx and going through all the beauty products, because you can find like really good stuff there, you know, so I had to basically refigure my own consumption habits based upon different times of my life. And eventually it's stuck. But at the same time, when you're reading all of the stuff that I talk about every single day, that will turn you off like nothing else will. Yeah. You're so right. But I also think in what you said there, the luxury bit's really interesting because I think this is something that's happening and I feel like it's getting even worse because of the way that fast fashion is moving even more is buying clothes used to be especially when I was younger a really big event and it would be

really exciting and it would generally be my mum would maybe take us in September when the season was changing we were growing we would get our like winter clothes and like jeans for that year or whatever. And it would be like a big event to get these, a pair of boots, a pair of jeans and whatever else. And then as I got older, it slowly became, oh, actually you can go shopping a bit more frequently. And now it's like just ordering and returning, ordering and returning, you know, three or four times a day, people are buying stuff because of the speed with which you can buy and return. It should be a treat return it should be a treat it should be a treat and it we we really kind of lost that in a way yes totally I think that like looking at as luxury and it's kind of like what I try to do with meat because I still eat meat but I've tried to cut

down so if we're gonna have I don't know roast dinner then we really look forward to buying a really nice piece of lamb or whatever and it's a luxury rather than you know an everyday and that kind of framing really helps I think to make small changes anything done in excess is not good for the planet or us essentially you know like having a wardrobe full of clothing that you don't even like it's not good for you nor is it good for the planet you You can't even see the gems in your wardrobe because it's stuffed chock-a-block with stuff that you bought that you didn't even need. You can't breathe in your wardrobe. So naturally you open it and you just go, oh, I hate it all. Guess I got to buy something new. When a body is discovered 10 miles out to sea, it sparks a mind-blowing police investigation. He's one of

the most wanted men in the world. This isn't really happening. Officers finding large sums of money. It's a tale of murder, skullduggery, and international intrigue. So who really is he? I'm Sam Mullins, and this is Sea of Lies from CBC's Uncover. Available now on CBC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts. It's so true. Actually, lockdown's been really good for me wearing stuff that I wouldn't always have worn because no one's really going to see me. So I've been putting on really crazy outfits just to walk around the house. And it's really fun. It's really fun though isn't it and like I literally have rediscovered things in my

closet that like I kind of didn't realize that I loved as much as I actually you know like oh my god I love this why don't I wear this anymore and I realized also like most weeks I can get away with alternating two separate outfits and just call it a day, you know? And so I'm still at a place even during lockdown where I'm looking at my wardrobe and thinking you have way too much clothing, way too much, even though I love clothes. Now I tend to only buy, you know, I took one year. So the first year that we were married, I basically wanted to make sure that more than 50% of what came in my wardrobe was secondhand.

And I succeeded at that. That was very exciting. And when you have things like that happen, you get even more inspired. It's just sort of taking the first step because we're so used to consumption that we cannot imagine a life where we're not consuming a certain way. It's just like, oh, but I'd be so bored. No, you actually wouldn't. And you probably have more money in your pocket to spend on nicer things that before you said you couldn't afford. And so like, for me, you know, one year of my

20s, I added up so many of my receipts, and I was just horrified by it. You know, in that whole time, I'd also been saying like, oh, well, I would buy better, but I really can't afford to. But it's like, no, but you can afford to spend thousands of dollars on clothing you don't even like anymore. Like, you're doing something wrong here. And so it was a lot of different moments of self-examination. And like, now I really don't feel the need to buy a lot of clothing at all. I'm really fortunate. I'm in a place where like a lot of sustainable designers do want to send me stuff. And occasionally I will get something for free, but I even limit that because I don't think it's realistic to present that to your readership constantly. That's not the way we're supposed

to live. It's not the way it just isn't. And so like my readership knows there's certain dresses that you've seen on my Instagram, probably about 10 times, you know, and I I'm going to continue to do that because I need, we just need to slow this cycle that we have this, we're setting really unreal expectations for ourselves and others when we do that whole like presenting people with new stuff all the time. And so I, I'm very limited in like what I take from designers. And also because I do talk about like small and ethical designers and whatever, I don't take all the freebies, because I know that like, a lot of small designers are really squeezed on like, you know, pricing and whatnot. So like, I tend to still

buy a lot of stuff. But for me, personally, I know that the way I was interacting with the system of fast fashion was not sustainable for my wallet or anything. And now that I'm not, I actually have more money to spend on things that are really meaningful and bring me lots of joy for many years. I love that. I did a similar thing. I think it was maybe like two or three years ago now where I set myself a challenge to only buy secondhand. And that really, I found the most amazing things in charity shops. You would not believe like Paul Smith suits and amazing vintage jackets the best things in my wardrobe have all come from charity shops and that that really helped me to not want it like kind of put me off I'd go and look on like

ASOS and fill my basket up and then wouldn't buy it because I'd be like actually no I don't I don't want that but in lockdown I've definitely been buying lots of home stuff and it's definitely for that like click of joy that is not good and I'm trying to stop doing it but god I mean the world is just it's it's really it's really hard like I don't limit myself with certain things like books if I want a book I'll get the book you know even candles I have too many now like I'm the type of person where like I'll buy a lot of something and then like it's like, okay, that's enough. You can't buy any more until you like, you know, send one out. Like basically you have to burn one all the way through before you can get a new one. So I do set limits for myself, but I totally understand that need that you feel right now.

I get it too. I just never really complete the purchase. That's a really good place to be. Okay, right. So we're going to go, sorry, we've stuck on that for ages, but I love talking about this. It's a really good place to be. Okay, right. So we're going to go, sorry, we've stuck on that for ages, but I love talking about this. It's such a good topic. So your second one is the actual real history of the world and how colonization and racism affects people today. I mean, it's just, you take it away. It's just, it's such an important thing

now, I guess it always has been, but it's so at the forefront now of people's minds and then there's a huge hole in everyone's knowledge of the real history of it and I think that's where is we're causing a lot of friction between certain groups because some people are being presented with information they've never heard they've never heard before they're just like you're lying and it's like no I'm not I'm not like and that's part of what's being on social media is about like random people getting mad at you for random things when like it's just them being presented with new information totally I mean so what was your so obviously you grew up in the US what was your education like around this did you have

anything on your actual curriculum teaching about this or or not black people were treated really badly they were slaves and then martin luther king came around everyone's friends now the that's pretty much the summary of like my 80s education on like all of these topics you know the way we talk about settlers coming to the States, the history books portrays that as a heroic effort, when in actuality, they literally came and stole someone else's land and push those people off the land. And, you know, did genocidal horrific shit to the indigenous people that live there. But it's presented like, oh, but that didn't really happen. Yes, it did, actually. You know, like, I come from Virginia,

which is indigenous land. And the vast majority of history of the United States completely does not acknowledge that, you know, it talks about Thanksgiving, where like, the indigenous people and the settlers sat down and had a meal together. They were friends. No, actually, the indigenous populations were killed off because of the colonialists that arrived on their land, basically. And so it's really hard to have an honest conversation about any of this when so many people have been completely miseducated about the actual history of the of the world and how that still shows up in systems

today okay like a really great example I always give people if they're just wondering like what is like white privilege and this is very U.S. centric because it's obviously different in the UK. I talk about the GI Bill, which the GI Bill was something that the government granted to returning soldiers from World War II. And basically, the government would pay for you to either have a down payment on a house or go to school. And so all of these soldiers returned from World War II, and they were given these government grants to buy houses. And it's estimated that apparently one fifth of the homes bought in New Jersey were bought with the GI Bill. Now, who didn't qualify for the GI Bill?

Black soldiers who also fought in World War II. So you literally have generations of wealth where because of racist laws, there's been some real unfair advantages there. But people want to deny that the advantages are there or that they even exist, you know, because they can't quantify that certain people don't have years of generational wealth because oppression would not allow it. that, you know, there are people that are the descendants of slave owning families and they still have things in their families like plantations and things that, you know, no one else had access to. Or if you free an entire group of people that you've enslaved, but don't allow them to go to schools,

don't allow them to learn how to read. And anytime they build something for themselves, like Tulsa, Oklahoma, you burn it to the ground, you're going to oppress a group of people and make it so that they do not have the advantages that you have. And then in 2020, you know, your distant, you know, your descendant is going to be like, well, I don't understand what you're so mad about. Why can't you just pick yourself up by your bootstraps? And, you know, my parents worked really hard. Yeah. And they also had generational wealth and could put you through school. You know, I talk about all sorts of advantages. Like if you managed to go to

university and didn't come out sunk with tons of debt, you do have an advantage. I had that advantage. My parents were like, we're going to help you, but you have to go to like one of these cheaper universities. And I was such a brat about it. I wanted to go to like NYU or Columbia. And I was like, God, you're ruining my life. But in actuality, they saved me from piles of debt. Because if I had gone to Columbia, it was like $36,000 a year when I was in school, I would be hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. So if you don't have that debt, and you're on the job market, you already have an advantage over someone that does, you know, so that's why I talk about privilege in all of my work, because I want people to realize that, you know, like that's why I talk about privilege in all of my work, because I want people

to realize that, you know, like, there are people that legit have to decide between whether or not they pay a light bill or whether or not they buy these new shoes that they need for work from a fast fashion company. Those are not the people that need to be, you know, included in this conversation. But we also need to realize that like, it requires a lot of middle class and upper class dollars to keep the fast fashion machine lucrative and running. So like a lot of people will say like, Oh, but you know, I bought it because I was poor, but there's a difference between being broke and poor. Poverty is systemic. Broke is a temporary state. And so I have all of these

conversations and I use Lynn's privilege to examine it because we don't talk enough about class. We don't talk enough about race in our society. And in not talking about these things, we're hindering ourselves from having more honest conversations where maybe we can tackle some of these issues that we think are going to be really challenging to tackle. How do you feel people's receptivity is when you talk about race now compared to when you were saying you were writing about it before, like over the years, how has it, is it, has it become easier or is it more difficult? I'm just interested to know whether there's more resistance because I can't tell on the one hand in my echo chamber of the internet, everyone is very good at having a

really good discourse. And then on the other hand, we have fascists storming the Capitol. So yeah, it's really hard to say because like I used to be one girl standing in front of Facebook, screaming at my white friends to give a shit, you know? And so like, I, um, it's hard because as I have a platform, I'm open to a lot of anger sometimes from people. And so I feel like I've gotten pushed back at every turn, but I also think now that my numbers are bigger, perhaps that's, you know, has something to do with it um but when I first started talking about race my family sat me down and was like hey Aja it's great that you're like interested in this topic but like you're really really pissing off all the white people we know and I was just like well tough you know like it was very very hard I mean when Black Lives Matter first happened even people

that I liked were like, I just don't understand why we can't say like, all lives matter. And I was like, because all people are being murdered by the police at the same rate. And they were like, yeah, but like, it kind of hurts my feelings. So that was really trying for a while. And now, and now few people who consider themselves leftist or liberal or whatever would challenge that point. But for like the first three years, it was like banging your head into a wall. It really was.

And so I just feel like regardless of where I am, there are going to be people that are going to push back on things, even when you're being incredibly measured and incredibly precise in what you're saying. I mean, I remember one time, this one person just came on my platform for like a minute, and they read one of my posts, and they messaged me, they were like, well, fuck you. And I was like, okay, I was like, so like, tell me what's going on with you. Like, why would you send this message to me? And they were just like, well, I'm low income, and I can't afford and I was like, okay, but like, I'm literally talking to people at my level of privilege, like if it doesn't apply

to you, then it absolutely doesn't apply. I would never tell you to not dress yourself to not dress your kids. I'm speaking to the people like me that were buying five new dresses every single season, because consumption was telling me that's what five new dresses every single season because consumption was telling me that's what I'm supposed to do. You know, and I talked them through how I talk about privilege and why it's important in these conversations and that you should like read more than one post. Don't just read one post and decide that like, you know, everything about the angle that I'm coming at this from, you know, and by the time I had talked them down, they were like, oh yeah, you're right. And I was like, but also don't message people and just shout,

fuck you at them. That's not very cool. And then they blocked me. And I was like, cool. It's, I mean, the space is just so odd. I've just, I did a podcast of the day with Michaela Loach, and we spoke again about how it's very, very weird when you're open to this many people's opinions because people just do seem to have such a big disconnect. And it's weird. I would never feel that because we're on the content creation side of things.

So we know that if we send a DM, it'll probably get seen. And if we write something mean, that person's probably going to be impacted. Like, I'm sure you're the same. I was the same before I had a platform though I really was like I never I always thought to myself like don't message people unless you're prepared to like really like put your back against the wall you know what I mean like I've always thought that and it does surprise me how emboldened people feel. Like before I had a platform, if someone who had a platform messaged me back, that was very exciting and fun, you know, someone that I admired. And I just, I find it very weird that other people don't keep that same sort of like, you know, like people are busy, you know, maybe you're not getting it. And I still

sort of use a lens of my friends for things like if there's something that's really like getting on my tits. And I'm not sure if I'm coming correct, or if I woke up on the wrong side of the bed, I asked five separate friends, I'm like, hey, this thing happened with the brand. I am not sure whether or not to address it publicly. Like, am I the asshole here? And you know what? Sometimes I am the asshole sometimes. But I feel like a lot of people do not have those check-ins where it's just like, no, actually, you're the one that's getting it wrong, you know?

And so I think it's really important to just always, always, always check yourself. I check myself that we can't know everything. You can't possibly know everything. You can't possibly always get it right. And aiming for perfection isn't good for you anyway. So it's perfection doesn't exist, but what you can do is check yourself. If you're feeling some strong emotions about something as someone else, do I have the right to be upset about this? I mean, obviously you have the right to do whatever you want when it comes to your own feelings.

But sometimes it might just be that you woke up on the wrong side of the bed and not that that person has said anything that is pernicious or harmful and directly sent in your direction. Totally. And there's just so much projection with it as well like you can tell when someone is hurting from something really specific that's happened to them and they'll pick out something you've said which wasn't even the point and they're upset about it so sometimes it's really easy to know where that's coming from and it's probably not about you at all yeah but it's it still can be just a lot to take in even I was I said this in

the other episode but even if someone's message is like I'm really disappointed I'm like oh my god I'm like I feel like so upset I just I could not deal with um like a massive pile on like I know that you've you've definitely been through like stormy territory with um things on your profile in over the time and I don't know how you weather that because it can be a lot. I remember that it is mostly about people projecting and not about me. But I also used to work in the TV industry.

So like the whole time I was writing on the side when I was like in my 20s, I was working in TV. And I've definitely had like famous directors scream at me in front of an entire crew of people. So I would say I have like, you know, a pretty hardened shell for bullshit, but you shouldn't have to exist this way to exist in the world. I just want to say that like this, it's not. It's not that you have to get tougher. It's that the world should not treat people this way. Yeah, I think that's really true. Okay, I'm going to move on

to the last one because I've just realized how long we've been talking. Your last one is money management. Not enough people get this. I think this is so crucial. And you kind of had the theme of fiscal responsibility running through this whole conversation but i'd love to know where your ability to manage money came from or where your interest in it came from so fiscal responsibility is a real tough one okay because i think that people use that to like shit on poor people when poverty is systemic you know what i mean, no person that is making under a living wage is going to save themselves out of that poverty. That is just

not how it goes. If anything, I would challenge our entire society to think about raising wages for everyone. And what does that look like? It looks like less money at the top for the billionaires. That's my game. You know, like, obviously, we can talk about like, money management and whatnot, because I think that that is an important thing that should happen in schools. But ultimately, I definitely think that so many systems are set up to trap people in the places that they're in. So if you're in poverty, and you can't manage to find a job that pays you enough to actually cover your bills and lift you out of that poverty, you're not going to magically save yourself out of it. It's like

when people say to like, our generation, like, well, if you just stop buying coffee and avocado toast, you could buy a house. No, maybe we can't buy a house because wages have completely stagnated. And in the 90s, wages were what? The average wage in the UK. I've got this statistic somewhere. But it was like in the 90s, the average house in the UK was like 200 and something thousand and wages were like 39,000. And today the average house in the UK is like 700 and something thousand and wages are like 59,000. Maybe that's why we can't

buy a house. You know what I mean? And so I really want to just drive the point home that I'm never going to be the person that talks about, oh, you, everyone just needs to be more fiscally responsible. Like, maybe we all buy so much fast fashion, because we can't afford to buy houses. And we wait longer to get married, because we feel like we can't afford things like families and children because of low wages pretty much across the board. And don't get me started on the gig economy. I've never had a full time job in my life. Because once I got out of school within like the TV industry, they really started phasing out like the full time employment. And so everything I've ever done has been like contract, which means I've never been offered sick pay, vacation pay, leave,

I've never gotten any of those things. And for a long time in America, I also didn't have healthcare, which is a terrifying place to be if I do say so myself. And so I need to just make it very clear that at no point am I ever going to shake my finger at someone and be like, well, maybe you could buy a house if you hadn't bought those five dresses. But I still think the credit system definitely traps us pretty early in if we're not very, very much aware of it. Man, I just went on a rant. No, it was such a good rant. And also, you just made me think about when you say about the credit system, about Klarna

and all of these new generations of ways. Oh, yeah, man. Klarna is a bank. Watch out for them people. Like, yes, in some ways it's, I like when a brand offers a payment plan through their business where it's like you can break it up

and pay for the garment. I think that's great. An independent brand doing that. And some independent brands do do that. We used to have layaway in America where like my mom used to shop at this place called Zares. And there was a section where, you know, people would take things that they wanted to buy and they would pay for it in increments. When they got paid, they pay this amount and they pay that amount.

When it's finally paid off, they could take the item home and Zares would keep the item for them until it was finally paid off. And so I think that things like that are great, but when it starts to become that banks are getting a real monopoly on this, it's just another element of their credit system just re-extending itself. Yeah, I think that, I can't remember if it was you talking about that, because I only have, or if I listened to another podcast, maybe it was someone else, maybe it was you, but I thought that was really interesting about, and if you didn't ever have enough money to get the garment they would just keep it is that right I think so I I was very lucky my my mom didn't um my mother's always been the type of person where you only buy

things if you have the cash in your pocket. She's really, really, really like weary of the credit system. And so we never had to do layaway, but I do remember seeing like piles of things on layaway. But yeah, it's, I think that there can be really good things when people think about making things more affordable for other people. But a lot of these quote unquote solutions that are coming around are just repackaged, remarketed traps for people to sort of be in

a position where they might not be in a good position. And maybe it wasn't an item that you actually really needed, but you felt compelled to consume in that way because that's what our society tells us to do. When it comes to money management what have been like the kind of fundamental or most life-changing things that you've learned that have given you a better handle on your money and how to make it last longer or more worthwhile or whatever it might be has there been anything that you particularly like oh my god once I realized this? Yeah so my mother up um in a pretty impoverished position and she definitely from the minute I was a child like first of all my parents did not give us

allowance instead they were just like you want spending money go get a job so like I would babysit I would pet sit I had a paper route I always had like three different jobs at one point. And then like, when I would get like my paychecks from my paper route, my mom would take me to the bank and we would put it in the bank. And like, my parents got me very early on, like, my mom would be like, well, I mean, yes, technically, you could go to Toys R Us and buy all of those toys that you've wanted. But it's going to give you temporary joy. So why don't we just put it in the bank? And then if you still really, really want one of those toys, you can buy it, you know.

So like, she sort of gave me a real like foundation for like, thinking about it. And she was definitely one of the people that was just like, why are you buying all this crap clothing? Like she, she definitely shamed me for it. But I think I needed that shade. And now when she sees like, what I write about for a living, oh my god, she's so smug. There's nothing worse than your mom sitting there gagging to say I told you so but not saying it. But both of my parents have been very like instrumental and sort of like if you get a credit card you pay it off at the end of the month you don't let it lag because once they start putting those fees on that's when you're you know going to end up paying way more for

something that you might not have even needed so I've always sort of had the mentality you know that you just you only pay for like what you can afford. But I think that that my parents really set me up for life by making me very weary of the credit card system. And today I do have a credit card in the UK. I just got one last month, actually. And I only use it for like my groceries and stuff like that because I do want to build credit in this country. But I'm definitely on but I I'm definitely

on it I'm definitely on it for sure yeah I think that's so important I definitely think that that's such an interesting thing that we don't get told and I never got I can't remember why I didn't get a credit card but I remember lots of my friends at uni getting it and doing exactly what you said building up arrears then getting charged interest and then they'd be panicking and it you watch I've I had friends as young as like 19 doing that. And then suddenly, of course, none of us know what it means when you're getting these charges on your bank and like how you can pull together money from a student loan and a part-time waitressing job. And I definitely think that it seems scary, but we could be taught about that at 15, 16, you know?

I think you really can. I mean, I remember my older sister, we were like, I was like 17. And she was 23, I think, five years difference. And we were in London, and she used her ATM card at a British ATM, and the bank charged her so much money. And we were just like, we learned a very valuable lesson there. We were like, always read, you know, the small print about using your credit card overseas. So there's, there's been moments where like, we feel quite stung. And then we're like, Oh, I'm never doing that again. But I generally think that being born not in poverty puts you in a place where you're already ahead of the game. I really do. And it's not because you did anything right. It's because that is the luck of the draw.

But what we can do is we can have open and honest conversations about where we're at in life and what advantages we have had. And in having these open conversations, hopefully we can even the playing field for everyone, because it's not fun to be like, oh, all my peers have houses and I don't. And then you find out that like 75% of those people got generational money from their parents, you know, like that's not really fun. So like the more open we are in these conversations, the more we can get to a point where like, you know, maybe that person isn't beating themselves up because they don't own a house. And it seems like all their friends do, you know? Yeah, I completely agree. I think that I'm at that age now where a few people are starting

to buy houses. But even then, it's only people that, as you say, like have parents that can maybe help them out with the deposit. I don't really know anyone that's kind of buying off their own back. Whereas my mom and dad bought a flat in Highland Hill, which I would have killed to have lived in for like 20,000 pounds or something when they were in their early 20s. And I'm like, oh, my God, I can't even get a car parking space for that price. I remember one time I had bought my, all of my cars have been secondhand. And my most recent car, my younger sister now has it. And I bought that cash off of Craigslist. And I felt like a baller.

I was just like, look at me. And my friend pointed it out. She was like, look at you. You bought a car cash. And that was a moment where I felt very like pleased with myself. But once again, that was like, I was starting to wind down off of like spending as much as I had been spending on clothing I remember my biggest thing that I bought like actually no it was when I first started making proper money from my job and I bought

myself a Dyson cordless hoover and that's when I felt like an absolute G I was like this is amazing I just like it's I still love it to this day. It's like the best thing I own. That's amazing. It's so good. Before we go too off topic, I also wanted to ask you, I know that you have written or in the process, have you written your book? Is it finished? It's finished, right? I am in the process, but it won't be announced for some time. So that's about as much as I can say on that at the minute. But yes, I'm in the process of writing a book. I'm nearing the end. Are we allowed to know what it's about or is that top secret?

I think if you've listened to this conversation, you probably already know what it's about. Okay, amazing. Oh, well, I'm very excited for when that does come out and when we get to read that but for people who maybe don't already follow you online or don't follow your work where could you point us to to find out more from you yeah so you can find me on instagram um instagram.com slash Aja Barber uh and I my work is supported through my patreon because here's the thing you can't be the person that's like looking at the fashion industry and being like you guys suck and you're ruining the planet but also pay me and so i don't have a lot of advertisements on my instagram specifically because of the subject matter i deal in but if you want like a daily newsletter, essentially about like consumption, but also brands that are doing things cool.

You can find me on Patreon, patreon.com slash Aja Barber. And those are the two spaces I am on the Internet. I'm on Twitter sometimes. Twitter, Aja says hello. And I sort of bounce between different spaces. I do have a book club. It's called Aja's Awesome Book Club. It's on Facebook. You can join that too. That's completely free. So I put like information in

different spaces. That's one thing we know about social media is that it's super fickle. Like everybody loves Instagram now, but who's to say what it'll look like in three years. So like I spread myself out around the internet. I love that. That's amazing. Well, thank you so much for joining me and chatting to me. And I've absolutely loved it. I hope that you've enjoyed it too. I really love a good conversation. I have to say, like, I always am kind of like, oh, I've got a podcast. And then I always end up walking away feeling much better.

So thank you so much for having me. Oh, it's been an absolute pleasure. And thank you everyone for listening. I will see you next week. Bye. Bye. Fandu Casino Daily Jackpots. Guaranteed to hit by 11 p.m. with your chance at the number one feeling, winning. Which beats even the 27th best feeling, saying I do. Who wants this last parachute? I do.

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