.png)
This story discusses sexual assault and gender-based violence.
“Just because I carry it well doesn’t mean it’s not heavy.” This saying is emblazoned on tie-dye T-shirts worn by dozens of young women working in Accra, Ghana. They are the Kayayei, a term used for female head porters who carry large, often dangerously heavy, loads of clothing on their heads through the narrow pathways of resell markets. Many of these women come from around the country to work in the city’s thriving secondhand centers.
“No matter how heavy it is, they carry it,” says Hajara Musah Chambas, who goes by Nabia, of the Or Foundation. If these women were to split bundles to try to lighten the load, she explains, they would lose money. “She’s not going to be able to pay her rent.” Over time, the weight of the clothing can cause permanent damage to the spine and complications can lead to death.
The phrase on their shirts is both a literal reference to the work of a head porter and a metaphor: The load many of these women carry, especially the younger ones, is more than just their livelihoods. Because of their vulnerable housing situation, where they live in homes with no locks or bathrooms, they are often subject to violence from landlords and other men. “The kind of trauma these women are carrying in addition to the weight is [wild],” says Nabia. “Sometimes you talk to them, and they’re just like, ‘Hmm’ — they don’t have anything to say to you. They can’t even express how they feel because no one even takes a second to understand.”
This is just one of the many examples of gender-based violence that permeates the fashion industry. For consumers, the industry promises to help you feel your best; for workers, it’s a better life and a way to provide; and for models, it’s upward mobility and adjacency to a glamorous world. But as with many vows, the promises fashion makes to millions of people around the world are fraught. And for the young women who prop up every segment of the fashion industry, those promises are often completely broken.
From the production of clothing to the marketing of products to their polluting end, young women in the most vulnerable positions are not protected by the industry that is making billions off their work. Cameron Russell, model and author of How to Make Herself Agreeable to Everyone, likens this problem to consent. In each position — whether models, Kayayei, or garment workers — can you truly consent to something when you are told one thing but experience something else, something completely exploitative?
“I started modeling when I was 16 and was always surprised by the strange duality of the success I experienced,” Russell tells Teen Vogue. “While on the one hand I was getting bigger, more lucrative jobs, the expectation as I rose in the ranks was to go with the flow. Play the part. Conform. Please. Be grateful and nothing else.”
Russell continues, “Experiencing this ‘success’ myself was so jarring at first that it led to my curiosity about why the fashion industry — which, by appearances, seems to celebrate femininity, women, and even expansive expressions of gender — felt that it also relied heavily on a very silent, gendered workforce.”
