Sydney Johnson

Bombarded with microtrends, fashion influencers, and clothing ads, it is so easy to fall into a mindset of deficiency. It's not uncommon to feel like you don’t have enough clothes or the right clothes to cultivate your personal style, or reproduce the styles you see on social media. I’ve struggled with overconsumption in the fashion industry for as long as I can remember. Though it often starts small, casual shopping can become an addiction for many, where buying up the current trends helps you feel better about yourself, your body, or your status, but always for a limited time. That time between trends has been cut drastically through the introduction of ‘microtrends’ carried through fast-moving social platforms like TikTok and Instagram. According to Sakshi Venkatraman of NBC News, microtrends surface in days and can disappear just as spontaneously, “usually coming from brands trying to recreate one specific item” to fit “short-lived aesthetics” like “office siren” or “dark academia” (Venkatraman 2024). These fleeting fashion trends not only create excessive waste and pollution from the fast fashion industry itself, with consumers often buying and discarding their clothing faster than usual, but also produce a wide range of sustainability issues. Child labor, poor working conditions, and excessive water consumption are all products of the fast fashion industry, according to Earth.org.

We are often so far removed from the places where our food is grown, especially in Los Angeles, that it's easy to forget how mass deforestation enables the production of many of our favorite foods and products. I usually don’t think twice about the food I pick out–unless it's for personal health reasons like choosing organic produce or grass-fed meat products. However, upon reading up on the impact of our food products on forest habitats, I realize that a lot of the products I use frequently, like peanut butter, chocolate chips, coffee, and the usual meat, dairy, and eggs, are all big enemies of tropical forests. One of the biggest realizations I made while reading up on the topic was the high prevalence of palm oil in so many of the manufactured products in my cupboard. From trail mix to instant noodles to crackers, palm oil is “one of the most common processed food ingredients on the planet,” responsible for the destruction of about “300 football fields of forests” per hour, according to OneGreenPlanet. Luckily, OneGreenPlanet also had some suggestions for how to swap out our palm oil products with forest-friendly alternatives like avocado, olive oil, and coconut oil. Though I plan to use up what I already have in my cupboard, the next time I go grocery shopping, I will be much more conscious of the ingredients listed on the back of my products. To help with this, I found an app from the Environmental Working Group called “EWG's Healthy Living” app. You can scan the product’s barcode or type the name in manually to pull up its EWG rating, helping you stay more informed about the products you’re buying. Another tool I found I can use to assess the impact of the product I’m buying is to look for the little green frog seal on the packaging. This means that the producer of that item has met certain requirements for the item to be listed on the Rainforest Alliance website, signifying “environmental, social, and economic sustainability. Coincidentally, on the coffee grounds I ownI found the little green frog seal, signifying that it was sustainably grown and manufactured despite being one of the food groups identified to be unfriendly to forests. What this showed me is that we don’t always have to give up our favorite foods for good, but there are certainly more ethical and sustainable ways to consume. By looking for the little green frog, checking the ingredients, and consuming in moderation, we can work to reduce our impact on the tropical rainforests, supplying us with carbon sequestration, biodiversity, and many other eco-services.

Receiving a quality education has always been a given for me. As the daughter of an educator, it was always clear to me that I would attend school through grade 12 and then go on to a 4-year university. My mother always played a big role in ensuring my education was prioritized and supported, knowing the impact that education and big career dreams can have on a young girl. I realize, however, that my female classmates and I are extremely fortunate to have received the gift of education, though it should be viewed as a definite human right. Unfortunately, “worldwide, 119 million girls are out of school,” with 34 million of those girls of primary school age, "28 million of lower-secondary school age, and 58 million of upper-secondary school age” (UNICEF). Significant barriers to girls’ education cited by UNICEF include “poverty, child marriage, and gender-based violence,” including female genital mutilation. These extreme experiences are shocking enough in singularity, but what’s even more shocking is how prevalent and normalized many of these experiences are in so many young women’s and girls’ lives. Upon reading up on barriers to girls’ and women’s access to education, I found a host of reasons to further my knowledge on the subject, though many stem from wanting to resolve the inhumanity practiced in some of these countries; there are several other pieces at play; from professional-development and teacher training to menstrual hygiene management in schools and re-entry programs for young mothers. Educating our girls and women also does more than progress towards gender equity and equality across the board, but also lends itself to better family planning, improved livelihoods for mothers and their children, “better economic opportunities” and “delayed childbearing,” all of which helps to slow the rapid growth of our global population and contribute to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions (Project Drawdown). Thus, I must continue to educate myself and others, with the privilege I have been given, to progress towards a better future for girls and women worldwide.

I don’t know why I approach so many of my meals like I haven't eaten in 3 days and will not eat for the next 3 days, despite my routine 3 meals a day with some snacks here and there. But the reality is that I either cook or take way more than I need, leading to excessive food waste, or I feel guilty having taken the food already, so I finish my place at the expense of physical discomfort. I think the rhetoric I was exposed to growing up, about always cleaning your plate, and “well, isn’t it so good you want seconds?” has seriously carried over into my adult years.

The idea of biking to school or work always held a special “someday” spot in my mind. Growing up several miles from all of my childhood schools, it never made any logistical sense that I would ride a bike to school–it was simply too far. Thus, I’d get a ride to school from my parents or my sister, and then drive when I came of age. There was something about biking to work that always excited me for some odd reason; maybe it was the fitness lifestyle it conveyed, the special gear associated with it, I can’t be sure. But what I do know is that when I got my hands on my uncle’s bike, I was giving it a go.

Though it's nearly second nature to grab the TV remote before I even grab my utensils when sitting down to eat lunch or dinner, I hadn't much considered how this behavior could be impacting not only my digestion, but my long-term health. It can be difficult, however, when the 30 minutes I sit down for a meal are sometimes the only 30 minutes I have for myself. Throwing on a TV show or finishing up a movie during my meal has turned into a form of "dinner and a show." But reading about the costs of distracted eating and how my body "perceives distraction as stress," thus impairing my digestive processes and nutrient absorption, I felt obligated to try out consistent mindful eating for a change. Throughout the week that I practiced 30 minutes per day of mindful eating, I found that sitting down to a meal without my phone, laptop, or TV felt quite freeing. It was more relaxing than I had anticipated, especially since I usually associate these "distracted periods" with my self-care periods. But knowing that when I finished my meal, I didn't have to then turn off and 'take away' my "self-care" time, finishing my meal didn't feel like as big of a deal. I ate until I was satisfied, packaged up my leftovers, and avoided excess consumption while giving my body the peace it needed to properly rest and digest.