MAHA wants to make cotton the new beef tallow
MAHA wants to make cotton the new beef tallow
MAHA 想要让棉花成为下一个“牛油”
A new campaign to promote American-grown cotton to consumers sounds nice — but is far more complicated than the administration is making it sound. 一项旨在向消费者推广美国种植棉花的新运动听起来不错，但其复杂程度远超政府所描述的那样。
In between beef tallow fries, raw milk, and vaccine denialism, Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) figureheads have set their sights on another slice of life: our clothing. 在牛油炸薯条、生乳和疫苗否定论之间，“让美国再次健康”（MAHA）运动的领袖们将目光投向了生活的另一个领域：我们的衣着。
“The MAHA movement doesn’t stop with what we EAT — It’s also about what we WEAR,” Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said in a post on X in late May. “For decades, America offshored textile jobs and allowed foreign synthetic, plastic-based materials to take over the clothing market.” “MAHA 运动不仅关乎我们吃什么，也关乎我们穿什么，”农业部长布鲁克·罗林斯（Brooke Rollins）在 5 月下旬的一篇 X 帖文中表示。“几十年来，美国将纺织业岗位外包，任由外国合成的塑料基材料占领了服装市场。”
Rollins went on Fox News to promote a new Department of Agriculture campaign dubbed “the Great American Cotton Plan,” an initiative that promises subsidies for American cotton farmers, revitalization of domestic manufacturing, more favorable trade policies with other countries, and a marketing campaign aimed at consumers that urges them to buy “plant, not plastic.” The campaign is at least partially a problem of the Trump administration’s own making: Cotton farmers themselves have said tariffs and increasing costs are making the job harder and more expensive. 罗林斯在福克斯新闻上推广了一项名为“伟大的美国棉花计划”的农业部新运动。该倡议承诺为美国棉农提供补贴、振兴国内制造业、制定更有利的对外贸易政策，并开展旨在敦促消费者购买“植物而非塑料”产品的营销活动。这项运动在一定程度上是特朗普政府自身造成的问题：棉农们表示，关税和不断上涨的成本正使他们的工作变得更加困难和昂贵。
The focus on cotton clothing and textiles as part of MAHA ideology is coming at an opportune time for the movement. There’s been a wave of interest in clothing made from natural fibers like cotton, wool, and linen, as opposed to synthetics like polyester that are common in fast fashion especially, but also in clothing more generally. 将棉质服装和纺织品作为 MAHA 意识形态的一部分，对该运动来说正逢其时。目前，人们对棉花、羊毛和亚麻等天然纤维制成的服装兴趣高涨，这与快时尚中常见的（以及更广泛服装中使用的）聚酯纤维等合成材料形成了对比。
Some brands are cashing in on growing consumer interest in natural-fiber clothing, marketing their products using imprecise and unregulated buzzwords like “non-toxic” and “clean.” And at every turn, influencers document their efforts to swap out plastics and other synthetics in their homes for “natural” alternatives. Now, led by Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., MAHA is subsuming cotton as part of the official platform. 一些品牌正利用消费者对天然纤维服装日益增长的兴趣大赚一笔，使用“无毒”、“纯净”等不精确且不受监管的流行词来营销产品。与此同时，网红们也在不断记录他们将家中塑料和其他合成材料替换为“天然”替代品的努力。现在，在卫生与公众服务部部长小罗伯特·F·肯尼迪（Robert F. Kennedy Jr.）的领导下，MAHA 正将棉花纳入其官方纲领。
The government’s appeal to consumers to buy, wear, and use cotton products over others seems, on its face, fairly harmless — cotton clothing does feel nice. It is a versatile fabric that comes in an endless array of textures, knits, colors, weights, and prints. It’s breezy in hot weather, especially with a looser weave that isn’t skin-tight. There are some products that I will only purchase if they’re 100 percent cotton, like pajamas, graphic T-shirts, or denim. Cotton, like every fiber, has its place in our wardrobes; the MAHA evangelists and profiteers, though, rarely untangle the nuances. 政府呼吁消费者购买、穿着和使用棉制品，表面上看似乎相当无害——棉质服装确实感觉不错。它是一种多功能的织物，拥有无穷无尽的纹理、针织方式、颜色、重量和印花。在炎热的天气里，它透气凉爽，尤其是宽松的织法不会紧贴皮肤。有些产品我只买 100% 纯棉的，比如睡衣、印花 T 恤或牛仔布。像每种纤维一样，棉花在我们的衣橱里占有一席之地；然而，MAHA 的鼓吹者和投机者却很少去理清其中的细微差别。
One garment category that’s gotten a lot of attention in recent years is activewear, which tends to be made of synthetics for performance and comfort purposes, and is often worn close to the skin. On social media, influencers dramatically stuff their leggings, sports bras, and underwear into garbage bags, vowing to toss their clothing and replace it with cotton products. The influencer content often goes for maximum panic. (“If you want to have babies one day, throw away all your activewear,” one video begins. It’s promoting a so-called “low-tox” athletic brand.) 近年来备受关注的一类服装是运动服，为了性能和舒适度，它们通常由合成材料制成，且经常贴身穿着。在社交媒体上，网红们夸张地将紧身裤、运动内衣和内衣塞进垃圾袋，发誓要扔掉这些衣服并换成棉制品。这些网红内容往往旨在制造最大程度的恐慌。（“如果你想将来生孩子，就扔掉你所有的运动服，”一段视频这样开头。它正在推广一个所谓的“低毒”运动品牌。）
But some average consumers also worry about working out in petroleum-based materials, citing polyester garments shedding microplastics and the potential of their skin absorbing chemicals from their clothes. A piece from Wirecutter dealing specifically with the plastic activewear question lays out some of the complicating factors: When it comes to chemical exposures, it’s not clear what risk clothing poses compared to, say, eating or drinking. Scientists are still trying to understand what effects microplastics have on the human body, or how to best measure microplastics to begin with. 但一些普通消费者也担心穿着石油基材料运动，他们提到聚酯纤维服装会脱落微塑料，以及皮肤可能从衣服中吸收化学物质。Wirecutter 专门针对塑料运动服问题发表的一篇文章列出了一些复杂的因素：在化学暴露方面，与饮食相比，服装带来的风险尚不明确。科学家们仍在努力了解微塑料对人体的影响，或者如何从一开始就最好地测量微塑料。
Synthetic fabric and materials also do play an important role in having comfortable, durable clothing: You need elastic in the waistbands and legs of underwear, for example, or they wouldn’t stay in place. Socks made of 100 percent wool or cotton would wear out faster. Even the “low-tox” activewear brands promoted by influencers have some amount of synthetic fibers with unidentified origins in the fabrics they use — 100 percent cotton leggings won’t have the same stretch. 合成纤维和材料在制造舒适、耐用的服装方面确实发挥着重要作用：例如，内衣的腰带和裤腿需要弹性，否则它们无法固定。100% 羊毛或棉质的袜子磨损得更快。即使是网红推广的“低毒”运动品牌，其使用的面料中也含有一定比例来源不明的合成纤维——100% 纯棉紧身裤不会有同样的弹性。
There’s another reality that much of the “non-toxic” and administration’s MAHA branding is glossing over: Being made from natural fibers like cotton doesn’t necessarily mean a garment is safer or chemical-free. Manufacturers will sometimes treat fabrics (including cotton) to make them more resistant to staining or wrinkling, which can lead to chemicals like formaldehyde being present in clothes. Some early research has also called into question claims that natural fibers do in fact biodegrade, as often claimed by manufacturers and brands. “无毒”和政府的 MAHA 品牌宣传中还掩盖了另一个事实：由棉花等天然纤维制成并不一定意味着服装更安全或不含化学物质。制造商有时会处理织物（包括棉花）以使其更耐污或抗皱，这可能导致衣服中存在甲醛等化学物质。一些早期研究也对制造商和品牌经常声称的“天然纤维确实可生物降解”的说法提出了质疑。
The USDA’s Great American Cotton Plan has also angered some MAHA influencers, who say it’s a scheme backed by the agriculture industry to sell more pesticides — cotton is water-intensive to grow, process, and dye, and uses massive amounts of chemical pesticides and fertilizer. Their preferred course of action is to focus on organic farming, but even that comes with a caveat: Generalized organic labels are squishy, and reporting by The New York Times found evidence of fraud along the supply chain for certified organic products. In other words, it’s a mess. 美国农业部的“伟大的美国棉花计划”也激怒了一些 MAHA 网红，他们称这是农业行业支持的一项旨在销售更多农药的计划——棉花的种植、加工和染色需要大量用水，并使用大量的化学农药和肥料。他们更倾向于关注有机农业，但即使是这样也有一个警告：通用的有机标签定义模糊，而《纽约时报》的报道发现了认证有机产品供应链中存在欺诈的证据。换句话说，这是一团糟。
One thing that’s for sure, though, is that consumer fears around what clothing is made of is great for business. 然而，可以肯定的一点是，消费者对服装成分的担忧对商业来说是一件好事。