Rating: NNNNN
Me and Dov go way back. Ever since the days when I ran my own one-woman sweatshop, scrawling grrl-power slogans onto clothes in my dark basement kitchen, I’ve bought T-shirts off the guy. OK, not him personally, but his company, American Apparel. But his face would pop up in my mail-order catalogue every now and then.
Our relationship was all smiles and rainbows for a long time. I bought boxfuls of his girly Ts, and his people assured me their workers made more than any other sewers in L.A., got free daycare, nearly free insurance coverage and free in-house massages. My back hurt I was jealous. But we were happy.
That was before the company’s massive modern white storefronts started infiltrating the trendiest streets on the globe and ads declaring it sweatshop-free began dominating the back pages of alt weeklies across the continent.
At first I was just peeved that everyone would know were I got my kick-ass boy-beater tanks. But now, a couple of years into their full marketing monty, some are freaking, saying the ads have escalated from mildly boundary-pushing crotch shots of models with bikini rashes to gritty amateur porn. Something about the low-grade girly shots, they say, degrades women and undermine the company’s whole labour rights message.
Others, however, defend the campaign as reflective of a growing demographic that’s grown up with the porn aesthetic on their computer screens. And in stitching multiple identities into one shirt – naughty, political and brand-free – American Apparel could be positioning itself to be the iconic outfitter of the decade. ***
You might not know it, but you probably have an American Apparel T lurking somewhere in your wardrobe. For years, small clothing makers, restaurants, church groups and strip clubs have been buying the company’s blank wholesale shirts and printing their own slogans, logos and images on them. The company didn’t sell directly to the public until a few years back, but when it did, it came out of the closet swinging with full-page ads announcing its novel, maybe even revolutionary slogan, “Sweatshop-free,” and an explanation of how its factory was different, special, an anomaly, really, in an industry that pretty much coined the word “sweatshop.” But besides all that feel-good socialist/capitalist stuff there were always the girls. The shots were often fairly nondescript except for the fact that they used real girls, non-models, with sweat stains and razor bumps, though a mild whiff of amateur kiddie porn or, more appropriately, barely legal porn could be detected in more and more of the shots.
But it was the “self-proclaimed hustler” (not that kind of hustler, says the company) lying on a cement floor with her ass in the air, a gritty, out-of-focus image recently circulated across the city via the back pages of Toronto weeklies (including our own), that got people asking me why I still use the company’s clothes. “Aren’t those ads pretty exploitative?”
What’s a girl still peddling grrl-power shirts part-time to say? I called the feminist analyzers of pop culture over at Bitch magazine for advice. After all, they, too, use Dov’s blank undies and shirts for their line of merchandise.
But Andi Zeisler, the mag’s editorial and creative director, seemed just as confused as I was. “It’s a conundrum.” Especially since, as she says, “most of the [no-sweat] stuff out there is not very stylish.” But she concludes, “I cannot agree with [the owner’s] choice in imagery, I cannot agree with his claim that he’s slept with [some] of his employees and the fact that he’s masturbated in front of a Jane [Magazine] reporter. But at the same time, he’s being very honest, and I appreciate that more than I appreciate a lot of the designers out there who say their clothes can be worn by any woman and make them cost thousands of dollars and cut them up to a size 4.”
Former porn star turned PhD sexologist Annie Sprinkle goes one step further, saying the ads are actually refreshing – exciting even. “I like the sweat, the grit, the reality. He obviously appreciates female sexuality in all its glorious sleaziness. And I think you can worship female sexuality and also worship women in the workplace.” Adds the lecturing performance artist, “If you see sex as bad, dirty and ugly, then you’re going to see these ads as bad, dirty and ugly. These ads are kind of a mirror. In a way, they’re almost neutral.”
But not all observers are so supportive. Media Watch founder Ann Simonton says it might be time for a boycott. “This is beyond ‘sex sells.’ It goes to a level of humiliation.” In fact, she says the ads stem from the same branch of reality porn as “humilitainment,” the kind that stages drive-by gang rapes but tries to make them look real.
Hm, gang rapes? Boycotts? Seems a smidge harsh. After all this trash talk, I decide it’s time to call the man behind the ads, Montreal-born chief marketer, photographer and owner Dov Charney, and ask him what he thinks of all the complaints.
He laughs them off. “It’s just a superficial critique. It’s like, do you say porn is exploitative? Because you should do a piece on it, fly to Los Angeles and discover that the job satisfaction level in the porn industry is probably higher than for those working at the Bank of Montreal in Toronto.”
But isn’t there a clash between the company’s tarted-up imagery and its worker rights claims? (Charney didn’t support a union drive in his factory, and he says he’s de-emphasizing the sweatshop-free angle because it’s “passé.”) “I think sexual freedom and economic freedom go hand in hand,” says Charney. “Life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness.”
Besides, he adds, people who say the ads are derogatory to women are behind on the times. “They’re old-thinking conservatives who are repeating false arguments or arguments that may have been true 30 years ago based on a context of social, cultural and political dynamics of another era. But right now, the women in the photographs and young adult women today I think celebrate the aesthetic of our advertising.”
Speaking of the women in the photographs, I have to ask, “Do you sleep with your models, Dov?” Pause. “Do I sleep with my models? It has happened, and it’s potentially possible that I’d fall in love with models, as they’ve fallen in love with me. People fall in love. That is possible. It could happen between you and me.”
It’s hard not to laugh. Charney’s somewhat nasal, boyish voice makes him sound more like the funny slacker boy next door than the 70s pornographer image he’s cultivated with his massive mutton chops and retro shades. He goes on. “It’s just about human factors. That’s what American Apparel is.”
Whatever the company is or isn’t, youth marketer Max Lenderman thinks it has hit something with its campaign. “The fact that he doesn’t use professional models speaks really highly to a women’s perspective, and really resonated with women and younger girls with body image issues.” Lenderman sees the sex in the ads as a pretty big disconnect from the political side of the biz, but he doesn’t think the company’s sweatshop-free line would have gone far without the sex.
“The best way to show T-shirts these days from an advertising perspective is to put them on good-looking people, and if everyone’s putting them on good-looking people, then you have to put them in strange situations. They’re just following that formula to a certain extent.” Lenderman says it’s not much different from what Calvin Klein did with its basement-porn-styled ads in 95, or the teen sex imagery that landed Abercrombie and Fitch in hot water a few years back.
But thanks to high-speed Internet and the widespread availability of cyber-porn, the purveying of sexual imagery has been normalized, says Detlev Zwick, an assistant marketing prof at York U’s Schulich School of Business, who looks into sociological theories of consumption. And Charney knows it.
“He’s got a good sense of what he can adopt and where he has to push the envelope in order to grab attention in order to get the youth market – which is completely overwhelmed by marketing messages – to pay attention to his particular brand, which is no brand, which is even cooler,” says Zwick
“This is a very postmodern way of playing around with meanings and imagery and with strategic positionings. It’s simply no longer possible to say one part of the market likes one thing and cannot handle another message at the same time,” Zwick continues.
“What we see here is a guy who knows the youth market is conscious, socially and culturally, sensitive to issues, the environment, sweatshops. At the same time, that doesn’t mean they can’t also embrace the imagery of typically heterosexual porn. They’re socially conscious and they embrace the porn aesthetic – why not?”
For his part, Charney says calling his ads perverse is an attempt to control youth sexuality. “It’s scary to be accused of being perverted in a bad way,” says Charney, sounding sincerely wounded by all the name-calling. “It’s like the whole slut syndrome. The girl is critiqued that she fucks too much or that she’s too loose, and she’s made to feel bad. And she’s just having a good time.”
And leave it to “puritanical” Toronto to attack Charney’s good time. Of all the cities where American Apparel stores have opened, T.O., he says, has been the only one complaining about the ad and his masturbating antics.
“Are people saying I should behave better? What are you guys worried about? Maybe you need to pull a whack or something,” he says, laughing. ” It’s not PC to critique gay sexuality right now. But the heterosexual guy who likes to slap girls on the ass, he’s like a monster. God forbid I was a hermaphrodite – then everyone would shut the fuck up.
“Especially in Toronto. They’d be very silent on that issue.”
adriav@nowtoronto.com
