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Thursday, May 27, 2021
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
OPINION
T
he strawberry dress. The
crossover
leggings.
The
Vivianne Westwood pearl
choker. There are endless examples
of fashion trends that TikTok has
breathed into existence. This relatively
new smartphone application has
so much ownership over these
trends that their original names are
frequently tossed aside in favor of “the
TikTok (insert article of clothing).” As
an Aerie employee, I saw the buying
power behind TikTok firsthand as
I watched girls swarm to our store
for months in search of “the TikTok
leggings,” a term that can be linked
to both Aerie’s crossover leggings
or
Amazon’s
scrunch
leggings.
TikTok’s seemingly endless amount
of discomfiting content and young
audience have built a connotation of
thoughtlessness around the platform.
But seeing droves of people who had
never been in an Aerie before walk
in with such purpose and interest
illustrated the tangible effects of this
deceptively simple app.
For an app that is so commonly
deemed to be “stupid” or “for middle
school girls” — an insult rooted in
the well-established tradition of
delegitimizing female interests —
TikTok has created an impressive
amount of careers for users in a
relatively short period of time right
from their own bedrooms. However,
TikTokers are rarely given the
respect that influencers on other
apps are given. Whether or not their
content deserves this respect is
dependent on both the TikToker and
the perspective of the viewer. With
their problematically superfluous
associations with the fashion industry,
fashion TikTokers are often seen
in a materialistic manner. However,
considering the 156,000 emails Aerie
received from customers asking to be
put on the waitlist for the crossover
leggings, this “materialism” resonates
with audiences of a multitude of
different backgrounds.
At some point, we have to ask
ourselves: Is liking clothing and the
way it can make you feel frivolous,
or is the assumption that these
interests are frivolous, frivolous itself?
Similarly, is TikTok thoughtless,
or is that connotation a result of
thoughtlessness? Many people make
a pointed effort to separate themselves
from what society generally considers
to be unimportant. In terms of
TikTok and fashion, two subjects that
are frequently discredited, TikTok’s
ability to get people to spend money —
a metric American capitalism places
particular emphasis on, for better or
for worse — stands in stark opposition
to the perception of frivolity around
the two.
The subject of a TikTok does not
seem to affect the popularization
of a specific piece of clothing. Even
videos that have nothing to do with
what the creator is wearing have
gone viral due to their clothing. The
particular TikTok that sparked the
frenzy around the aforementioned
leggings was a simple dancing video.
This trend embodies the constant
presence of the fashion industry in
our lives. Just by dancing, Hannah
Schlenker, the creator who made the
video that began the craze, caused
Aerie stores all across the country
to sell out of the leggings — an item
that, from my experience working
there, had not been performing well
for months.
W
ho is the first Colombian
you can think of? Maybe
it’s a popular musician,
like Shakira or J Balvin. Maybe it’s
an athlete, like weightlifter Oscar
Figueroa or soccer player Carlos
Valderrama. Or maybe it’s an actor,
like “Modern Family” star Sofia
Vergara or “Ice Age” star John
Leguizamo — who, in researching
this piece, I was surprised to find was
born in Colombia.
In any case, the answer is probably
not former President Alvaro Uribe.
This is not terribly surprising; the
only foreign leaders most Americans
consistently seem to recognize
are British Prime Ministers and
long-time leaders of enemy nations,
like Fidel Castro. Nevertheless, he
is probably the most important
figure in shaping Colombia over
the last two decades. During his
administration from 2002 to 2010,
he
implemented
far-reaching
neoliberal economic reforms such
as privatization of state-owned
enterprises and strong economic
deregulation. He also cracked down
on the Revolutionary Armed Forces
of Colombia, or FARC, a guerrilla
insurgency that had been on one
side of the nation’s decades-long
civil war, reducing its membership
from 20,000 to 8,000. He was
incredibly popular throughout his
presidency, winning re-election in
2006 with around 62.4% of the vote
and leaving office with an approval
rating of 75%. It is unsurprising that
both of his successors, Juan Manuel
Santos and current President Iván
Duque, are both deeply connected to
Uribe, with the former having been
his Minister of National Defense and
the latter’s party, Democratic Center,
having been founded by Uribe.
All of this popularity comes in
spite of the fact that Uribe and his
government’s security forces, in
their effort to vanquish FARC,
enacted untold amounts of brutality
toward Colombian civilians. The
most notable examples of this
are the series of murders known
as the “false positives” scandal.
During Uribe’s presidency, civilians,
often poor and mentally ill, were
promised high-paying jobs, lured
into remote areas, killed by military
officials and officially recorded as
FARC militants to inflate military
kill totals. Until these murders
were revealed in 2008, the military
officials involved were frequently
given promotions for the estimated
10,000 killings between 2002 and
2010. Additionally, Uribe and a
number of his allies were found to
have ties to right-wing paramilitary
groups, which over the course of
the civil war killed around 100,000
civilians. Horrifyingly, all of this
was carried out with U.S. funds as
part of the Plan Colombia program,
which pledged $10 billion between
2000 and 2015 to Colombia to fight
both FARC and drug trafficking. Its
principal advocates included then-
Senator Joe Biden.
Why is this relevant to today?
Over
the
past
few
weeks,
Colombia has been engulfed by
protests. These protests started
over a since-scrapped plan by the
Duque administration to raise taxes
on the poor, but they have now
broadened to include frustrations
over the government’s handling
of the COVID-19 pandemic and
the fact that it has broken the 2016
peace deal with FARC — killing a
number of social movement leaders
and former FARC fighters. The
police’s response to these protests
has been swift and brutal, killing 39
protestors, arbitrarily detaining 900
and sexually assaulting 12, according
to human rights group Temblores y
Indepaz. One of the most prominent
voices in favor of this crackdown
has been Uribe himself, whose
tweet
expressing
support
for
police was removed by Twitter
for “glorifying violence.” This type
of violence against protestors is not
unprecedented for Duque. In 2019,
protests over police brutality were
met with police brutality themselves,
with one estimate stating that 13
protestors were killed by police in
the first two days alone.
TikTok: A fashion marketing
monster
Colombian state-sanctioned murder: the
U.S.’s darkest secret
Design by Madison Grosvenor
420 Maynard St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
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