Clothes marked at 80%, 50%, and 30% off, just once a year. What could be that bad about that?
Sure, there might be the minor inconvenience of packed department stores, lines that stretch out the door, and changing rooms that you’ll never get to. Whether or not consumers love Black Friday, corporations sure do. Consumers think they’re the ones winning, but in reality, it’s a strategic storm of psychology designed to promote sales and overconsumption. It’s a revenue machine, and for consumers, the truth is far from those “50% off!” banners that hang in retail stores.
Black Friday is a powerful force — rooted in the unsavory: scarcity fear, anchoring, and doorbuster deals. And behind those lies the festering epidemic of fast fashion. Years of cheapened production, unethical materials/sourcing, and barely legal (if that) labor principles. For example, many brands set the stage for Black Friday by raising baseline prices so that Black Friday “deals” can appear more extraordinary. Countless studies have indicated that under timed pressure, reason is traded for panic.
In addition, many people over-consume, buying what they want rather than what they need. They’ll pick an item they like less just for a better deal. Many of the clothes sold now are not made for long-term use and begin degrading early into wear. This leaves many customers unsatisfied and even regretful of Black Friday purchases.
However, that is not to say that many people don’t benefit from Black Friday. Many people can purchase items they previously could not buy in good conscience; after all, they are, most of the time, deals. But it’s important to remember that many brands, particularly fashion brands, pick and choose which items to mark down. Usually, it’s the ones that have the lowest production costs.
When you begin to look deeper, the unethicality of big brands comes into focus. In hot, cramped sweatshops halfway across the world, workers are paid criminal wages — sometimes even less than 10 cents per hour. The labor behind these garments — stitched by hands in Dhaka, Phnom Penh, Addis Ababa — is equally absent from the marketing spectacle. In the rush to meet holiday quotas, garment workers see their hours lengthen and their compensation thin. Subcontracting grows. Safety protocols loosen. Black Friday, for them, is not a single day of discounts but a prolonged, exhausting season in which their speed — and their expendability — are exploited without pretense.
It is a strange irony: The more chaotic and frenzied the shopping experience appears to the consumer, the more controlled and disciplined the production process becomes for the worker. Somewhere between those two poles — the manic abundance of the store and the strict constraints of the factory — the notion of a “deal” begins to fray.
But Mother Nature keeps track. Each year, an estimated 92 million tons of clothing waste are produced globally — a number that spikes in the weeks following Black Friday. Closets overflow, and clothes are left to be thrown away: into donation bins, onto shipping barges, or directly into landfills.
But people are beginning to step back. The rise of secondhand marketplaces, community clothing swaps, and repair culture indicates a growing awareness surrounding the ethics of fast fashion. And as for Black Friday? Some consumers have begun to skip Black Friday altogether, and others make a single, thoughtful purchase. A few brands, including Patagonia, have made opting out part of their identity.
So, the question of Black Friday remains ethically controversial yet essential to shopping culture. But the ethical question always lingers in the number printed on a price tag. It is not just how much you’re shelling out of your pocket to pay companies, but the price of its materials, its labor, its environmental footprint, its lifespan, its aftermath. This is the true cost of Black Friday.
And only you can decide whether those deals are worth the cost.
Zoe Zhang is a sophomore at Century High School. Send comments on teen columns to Jeff Pieters, jpieters@postbulletin.com.
