Tales of the Underworld

The Politics of Non-Payment

Image: internaware.org

On any regular day the notion of unpaid internships should make any would-be graduate - suffering with even the mildest case of pessimism - break down and weep.  Not only is their life no longer their own (it now belongs to their department, their course, their tutors' marking decisions, the library), but the world will soon be unceremoniously flung onto their front porch like a wrecking ball, and the graduate in question will have no idea what to do with it.  They say there are only two things in life that are certain, paying taxes and death.  Now, in a job market that looks uncannily like the Nevada desert (dustballs and all), who knows if today's graduate will ever earn enough to cross the first tax threshold.  Is death really our only certainty?!

Forgive the severe case of pessimism (and slight morbidity) but WWP, for the first time, really did break down and weep today.  For the System (namely Her Majesty's Revenues and Customs) that had always be so kind, screwed me over royally over in both the long and the short term.  In the short term, they refused to refund me the minimum wage for the ten months work I did for a company that (illegally) never paid me a penny.  Despite the fact that this and this is going on right in front of our noses every time we switch on the 10 o'clock news (and/or check the BBC website when we've read everything on our Facebook feed), the Department of Work and Pensions  is unrelentingly refusing claims such as mine on the basis of an 'employment contract.'  You apply for an internship with a company, you create content for that company, most importantly you create revenue for that company...and your payment? 'Experience' or 'training.'  John Stewart Mill it ain't.

Our generation crave independence more than we're given credit for. Yet we are thrown like overgrown babies with BScs into bassinets and dumped at the door of businesses, a want ad for an unpaid internship tucked in our blankets.  We're expected to wait another five years in employment purgatory before we are finally allowed to fly the nest a second time. Apologies for the hyperbole; I should probably be writing semi-romantic prose highlighting the implications unpaid internships have on social mobility.  (I have, incidentally, already done that here).  But I want to dare to let a little emotion leak into this poor, malnourished blog.  The System has screwed me in the long run by expecting me to work for free.  I feel unappreciated, I feel hopeless. The desperate pleas of my cover letters make me feel embarrassed. But most of all, I feel ashamed for wanting to create a career in something I've loved doing for as long as I can remember.  The political consequences of unpaid internships are broader and deeper than I could ever explain here.  But the emotional consequences are greater than I've ever wanted to explore.

A Theory of Justice

Model's Rights

WWP is the first to admit a hatred of models.  Most are everything I will never be (read: tall) and their career involves wearing dresses worth more than my life savings.  Yet in the spirit of advent, perhaps it is important to see the models as more than deities of thinspo and envy, and realise that they are humans with rights.  More importantly, they are usually children with rights.

Back in February, the model Sara Ziff launched the Model Alliance, a quasi-union that has produced its own 'Models' Bill of Rights.'  Its aims are to undercut industry-level notions that forced nudity, child exploitation, sexual abuse and anorexia are acceptable.  Now, why this story escaped WWP's radar can either say a lot about my journalistic skills circa February 2012 (apparently tragic as even the Mail Online covered it) or the conscious ignorance of the campaign by the public and media.  For as Ziff herself succinctly put it, most 'probably see the industry as a privilege.'  And so, incredibly, this collective jealousy has excused an entire industry's law-breaking shenanigans.

It does beg the question though, as to why one career class must instigate their own bill of rights - unless I skipped over that clause in all my sales assistant contracts.  Unpaid child labour for instance must surely be covered in some form of legislation.  The problem appears to be the self-circulating cycle of the modelling world; models of around the age of 14 are employed, and when the wretched exploitation of the industry comes hurtling their way they cannot/will not speak out because of their age. Those who grow up and stay on as models become desensitized to this abuse and hence do not protest due to an artificial, constructed ignorance.  So as sad as the need for it is, the Model Alliance seems to have the right idea in acting as the middle man between malleable children and money-driven agencies. However to eradicate the problem completely, a dissolution of ignorance is what is needed.

Communist Stylewatch

Hasta la Victoria, Siempre

WWP was on her travels this summer.  In September I took a very grown-up, relaxing trip to a port town in Majorca with First Serious Boyfriend, and in June I packed up my backpack and flew to Havana with Friend From University, where we traversed the top half of the island by coach.  Cuba was many things to me.  Communist (obviously), sexual (unashamedly), joyful (largely). Yet the description which has been stuck on the end of my tongue every time friends ask, is time-warped.  Cars run on black smoke and gaffa-taped exhausts, computers run on Windows '98 and the people run on rum, salsa and cigarettes.  No, really.  The radio plays Greenday and Kelly Clarkson circa 2001.  And the women dress from a time WWP is struggling to pinpoint.

A typical Cuban chica's daywear wardrobe would consist of: cotton shorts - strictly half an inch too long or five inches too short; an emporium of jersey halterneck tops embellished with diamante (delete as appropriate) Playboy bunny/'Sexy Biatch'/marijuana leaf; a selection of brightly coloured bras with thick straps (to be worn with the halternecks); an assortment of footwear, ranging from plastic white gladiator sandals to plastic white stilettos; and a jewellery box filled with even more diamante for good measure. A night spent at the Casa de la Musica? Never before have hemlines tested the boundaries modesty like they have been in Havana. 

After spending only two weeks travelling through the country, it is impossible to grasp how exactly a communist system dictates lives.  I know that people queue for their bread in the morning and I know that the tax rate is incredibly high. I know that there is a prominent commodity-based black market, and I know that Cubans, who are generally the most gregarious and welcoming of people, will do almost anything to scam a few Pesos from an unsuspecting couple of English tourists.  However how this trailer trash look started, I do not know.  'Time-warped' doesn't cover it - the '90s in the Western world may have been a decade of fashion sloth and purgatory, but at least we matched our underwear accordingly to our crop tops and distressed flares.  Cuba, I love you, but surely Communism is no excuse for looking like a ho.  And if it is, let's hope an Iron Curtain is never dropped over us again.  

Tales of the Recession

Super-Hang-Me-Out-To-Dry

Image @ http://wallasworld.blogspot.com/

Superdry - the go-to brand of any 17 year old Essex boy with a part-time job - today announced a 17% fall in share prices.  Owned by the ever-so modestly named 'SuperGroup', Superdry is a clothing company born and bred in the town of Cheltenham, which although close to WWP's hometown and therefore, close to her heart, is not the Tokyo-style city the brand would like us to believe.  Cheltenham is, by all accounts, a posh town in Middle England; Superdry's clothes scream 'Konichiwa Bitches!', advertising gas stations with Japanese symbols ...or as Wikipedia likes to call it 'Engrish' (well they don't call it an encyclopedia for nothing!)


Superdry's fall in profits is an event both startling and depressingly unsurprising.  Whilst the brand was never going to turn the British Highstreet around sartorially (and let's all be glad they didn't) they have quietly enjoyed the successes of becoming the cult destination for surfers/skaters, and with phrases such as 'good quality' and 'it's expensive but it will last you!' banded around a lot, their growth became exponential.  CEO and poster boy for young retail entreprenuership, Julian Dunkerton, claims this dip is nothing but a delayed hangover from Christmas.  He may be right.  Savvy fashion retailers may seem to endure Britain's New Year thriftiness by discounting to their heart's content, but it should be noted that Superdry's highly branded, one directional style makes it a male brand through and through.  And when was the last time you saw men queuing at 5.30am for the Boxing Day Sales?


As you can probably tell, WWP is no fan of Superdry.  But that's not to say it's a bad brand.  The quality of the cotton is good and it's recent joining of the ETI is a promising step towards developing some form of Ethical Trading Policy.  That being said (and writing from a fashion-lover's point of view), seeing a brand which makes the entire male population of Bristol look the same start to stumble is a little bit enjoyable.  But of course, until the boys start wearing their bowler hats and shining their shoes again, men's fashion will never be as it really should.