Personally, I don't even shop at H&M already because they are another retailer who outsources for cheap labor. It was a really bad day for me when I decided to start checking labels on all clothes in the stores and they all came from Indonesia, Bangladesh, some other country that I know doesn't get to enjoy the same standard of living I do.
I say if you make clothes that I am going to wear, you should enjoy the same standard of living that I do. I didn't buy many clothes for years and am still struggling to learn to sew and try to find alternatives to buying clothes in most stores. H&M is a store that is commonly found in a mall. I don't shop in the mall for this reason. It is funny to me that this whole situation causes people to admit that they ignore things like this because they are now going to boycott H&M for this ad?
So, in this sense, I think everyone offended by this ad is actually the hypocrite. If someone makes clothes that you wear, they should enjoy the same standard of living that you get to enjoy.
Either way, this discussion has successfully changed this little, tiny boy's life forevermore. When this little, tiny, innocent child grows up, he will know that this is what people said about an ad he was in as a child. Instead of creating change, we have created a world where nothing has changed with this discussion. We are giving an innocent child the burden of coming to terms with this experience as he gets older and it will cause him to have questions about his mother and the world around him that he would not have had otherwise.
Instead of creating a world where children are equal. Children who hear about this in their homes will learn to be suspcious of the other children they go to school with. Instead of giving them the freedom to create a new world where we can move on from the past, we have enslaved them to the past and are telling them that things can't change no matter how much people tell you they can.
Even when you consider all the factors of history and the presence of racism that remains in the world today. Even if you consider the marketing team making all kinds of money that should have recognized something like this. There were still hundreds of people involved in releasing this ad. There were photographers, make-up artists, stylists, assistants, etc; and all of these people might have participated in this because they didn't see it as a problem. He is young beautiful child and children like to play. It is absolutely adorable and innocent to picture a little boy playing on a jungle gym like a monkey and we should be creating a world where that is what something like this means.
I think people are very selfish in putting a little innocent boy at the center of this discussion. It will shape his life and it will further divide the rest of us and make it impossible for us to keep moving forward.
