Make sure your Valentine’s gift is child-labor free

One-third of Nestle’s chocolate is from West Africa, where over 286,000 children have been reported working in slave conditions on cocoa (chocolate) farms. Nestle promotes genetically engineered foods while claiming “the Fair Trade approach is not a solution.”

Now you know one of the reasons I’ve been boycotting Nestle!

The Organic Consumers Association has an ongoing campaign called Unchain Your Heart, highlighting the chocolate companies that use child and/or slave labor. (Unfortunately, they did not include luxury brand Godiva, which also uses child labor chocolate from the Ivory Coast.) Take a minute to read about the companies, send them an email, and always buy chocolates that are certified Fair Trade.

Singapore Shopping Showdowns

This behavior seems unique to Singapore and Southeast Asians: When friends or acquaintances gather, and if one of them is carrying a new purse, wearing a new dress, or sporting a new electronic gadget, the question inevitably will come up: “Where you buy from? How much you pay?” (I think in most societies, the latter question would be regarded as rude unless you were really close friends.)

A straightforward, innocent, non-shopaholic person free of pretension would just answer the question honestly. In which case, sometimes they can expect a barrage of judgements, which may include one of, or some, or all the following:

• (Warning: The following contains Singapore language.)
• “Ai yoh! Why you pay so much? I know where to get it cheaper in JB.”
• “Ai yoh! Why you pay so much? I know a shop in Toa Payoh Central will charge cheaper and got more variety.”
• “Ai yoh! Why you pay so much? I saw it on sale at Takashimaya during their big sale.”
• “Ai yoh! Why dint you see that Chanel has almost the same bag? Why dint you go for the genuine one?”

I’ve been guilty of posing the question sometimes, but it was always out of genuine curiosity arising from genuine ignorance – not competition. And there were times in my life I was on the receiving end of the “shopping police” torture almost constantly, and found those people insufferable. Obviously, my shopping skills were not up to par, I never paid little enough, I never traveled far enough for my purchase, I didn’t get the best.

I remember while I was a foreign student in Wisconsin in 1998, I desperately needed my own computer (instead of constantly waiting at the labs in order to use one) and finally walked to the Radio Shack on a far edge of campus. It was the middle of the semester, Craigslist didn’t exist in that town, I didn’t have a car, I needed a computer immediately, and since all I needed was a machine with which to get on the Internet and type up my papers, I bought a display model PC that was the only thing under $1,000. I got it back to my dorm room with some help.

Enter the shopping police. In this case, it was one of the worst “officers” I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing, another girl from Southeast Asia who had to know about the purchases (large and small) of almost everyone on our floor of the “International dorm”.

“New computer! What model? From where? How much?”

After I told her, she ran back to her room, interrogation accomplished. Some time later, when I wasn’t expecting it, she ran back.

“Oh my god! I looked up your computer. PC Magazine [or some other publication I don’t remember] said your computer brand and model was the worst model and worst deal for the price range!” As she gasped this out breathlessly, her face carried the most elated, even beatific expression, relishing quite unabashedly the shame she expected to see from me because of her revelation.

I think I must have stood there with the most incredulous look on my face. Not because of her little speech, but that someone had taken an interest in my purchase only to research it, find the worst information, and literally run back to throw it into my face and take pleasure in my “suffering”. In my life, that episode still remains one of my strangest and most memorable encounters with human cruelty.

In any case, I shrugged, while she called me stupid and asked why I got it. Even after my explanations (apologies?) were given, she smirked and gazed at me with condescension. I’m really not exagerrating about this encounter – I remember well because every bit of it, as it happened, hit me as quite over-the-top. The girl, I believe, never ran into a situation where she had to apologize for this rudeness while I knew her. She got away with it so often, I’m apt to believe she’s still got the same mindset now, wherever she is.

Even with the materialism in Singapore, I’ve yet to run into such behavior again – thank goodness! Even when I’m in the company of shopping warriors, constantly judging and measuring everyone else’s shopping skills and knowledge against their own, I’ve found the easiest way to deflate them is to shrug, and say I don’t have as much time as they do to shop. Besides, isn’t time and money wasted on travel to keep chasing the best deals locally and overseas?

It occurs to me now that there is a new way to fight back, and I hope that any Singaporean readers weary of the shopping police and shopping warriors will think about it. I also suspect that once I’m back in Singapore in April, I will be doing it without even trying consciously. There is some time-investment involved – mostly research. Or you could just read this blog.

The biggest thing is, new ways needs to be introduced to “judge” shopping, if we capitulate to the Singapore tendency to measure people’s shopping skills (realistically, I think we have to, in the short term). More qualities need to be graded, in addition to measuring superiority in how little one paid, how the shopper knew where the best deal was and/or how far the shopper traveled. I propose the following:

• The admirable ability to not buy at all, because the person could go without, or make their own item with their own creativity and skill. (Good chance to turn the tables and show off, too. And possibly start a craft circle.)
• Having the knowledge of knowing how the item was made, from what materials (with what environmental impact), in what country, how much the workers were paid, how much (or how little) it was marked up by the retailer, and how ethical the manufacturers/retailers are. (Corpwatch, Sweatshop Watch and Fair Trade Federation are good resources.)
• Judging a consumer item by how little animal parts it used, that it minimized animal (and for that matter, human) suffering and how there was no animal testing involved. In other words, celebrating a vegan product as the logical, compassionate choice.
• Being smart enough to buy local products from independent sellers who are in your own country and with whom you can interact with face-to-face and ask questions about (or even see) their manufacturing process. Not only is it more personal, and both you and the item traveled less, but your money stays in your country instead of possibly going to a multi-national corporation overseas (depending on the product in question). There’s compassion, humanism, environmentalism and a little bit of patriotism is in this one.
• In purchasing or making a one-of-a-kind item, it should be highlighted how the item is a one-of-a-kind item, almost like art. Now, to a shopper who measures self-actualization or self-esteem by way of possessions, showing off a handmade, well made, unique item is the ultimate masterstroke.

Hey, if you can beat them, beat them, right?