Posted on 06/27/2014 3:08:54 PM PDT by Kaslin
Dov Charney was called the CEO of Sleezecake, responsible for the heightened pornification of fashion advertisements aimed at very young women, and he remained king of the mountain at American Apparel as long as the heap he was sitting on was green, as in money. For a while, it was.
But last week, the board of directors of the company he created fired him and the reign of Dov Charney, came to an end. He still owns 27 percent of the company, and he's fighting the sacking. For anyone unfamiliar with fashion-trade gossip, American Apparel offered a mixed bag of messages. The self-made founder, who emigrated to Los Angeles from Montreal, was an iconoclastic entrepreneur who championed American labor (no outsourcing), paid his workers good wages for making the cotton basics that added sex appeal to the preppy image. He made casual cotton cool, worn by gays, geeks, nerds, hip girls and boys, urban women and metrosexuals.
But the man had major flaws. He was sued by employees for sexual harassment and was known to attend in-house business meetings in his underwear. Sordid stories about his behavior became expensive with increased litigation and defense costs, severance packages and settlement payments. The company stock fell. His lurid personal behavior was accompanied by adverts of vulnerable-looking models in see-through leotards and scant panties, which came close to suggesting child porn.
He knew he was his own worst enemy, but he thought it important for fashion to extend the sexual boundaries of style when he opened his first store in Los Angeles in 2003. There's a long history of chic outrage in fashion, and his audience was ever more accepting after Brooke Shields at the age of 15 whispered seductively in a famous commercial that "there's nothing between me and my Calvins." (She's 49 now, and there's not so much interest in her Calvins.)
Apart from Dov Charney's personal extravagances, his demise coincides with a renewed questioning of our sexualized culture and its impact on the younger generations among us. A new low in an American Apparel ad showed the back of a young girl in miniskirt, bending over with the camera focused on her panties. This was less about selling the miniskirt than it was about a pubescent-shock sexual image.
This is not what feminists meant when they assured women that "You've come a long way, baby."
Common sense needs no psychological studies to affirm that adult fashion trends affect the way little girls see themselves, and there are ample examples examining the way little girls connect sexiness with popularity and self-perception. Tight leggings, skinny jeans, short shorts, tiny bikinis are big business in the pubescent set.
"Today's canny girls, emboldened by the hashtag "YesAllWomen" Twitter culture, scold their elders -- 'Don't tell us what to wear; teach the boys not to stare,'" Peggy Orenstein writes in The New York Times. "They are correct: Addressing leering or harassment will challenge young men's assumptions."
Actually, they're wrong. It may challenge some young men, but it won't change all of them, because such expectations ignore the fundamental and enduring differences between the sexes. Young women are learning this on college campuses, where mixed messages have made a mess of male-female relationships.
Harvey Mansfield, professor of government at Harvard, describes how feminists have failed to bring men up to a higher standard, and instead sink to the level of men. "It's not the fault of men that women want to join them in excess rather than calm them down," he writes in The Weekly Standard, "for men, too, are victims of the rape culture." He cites the false cues, driven by drunkenness, that men take in the campus hook-up culture.
The Harvard campus is roiled in the wake of a sexual assault on a young woman, described in her widely circulated letter in the student Harvard Crimson. She tells (anonymously) of her "hopeless, powerless, reaction" to an encounter in a dorm with a friend when she was drunk. Harvard, in response to this one accusation, assigned a "coordinator" with a staff to deal with the incident and its aftermath, and the federal government has sprung to action to combat the "hostile environments" on campuses, offering "significant guidance" for what it deems "appropriate" behavior between men and women. Nanny government now replaces in locos parentis.
Rape is a crime, but it becomes a harder call currently as the ambiguous "hook-up" rules muddle sexual foreplay. Gender neutrality in rhetoric does not trump biological nature in action. Here's an idea: What about a renewed appreciation for differences, adding a little feminine modesty to engender male restraint? We could start with what American apparel we encourage our young girls to wear.
I’m too old for their clothes anyway, but I made it a point to deride both them and A&F to my younger nieces, so as to pop the “cool” factor bubble. It worked with them, they grew to realise that they didn’t want to be sheep anyway.
LOL. I suppose I used the Alinsky tactic of ridicule before I’d ever heard of Alinsky. Unless a kid is totally rebellious, ridicule works. My nieces weren’t rebellious, just potential pack animals, as kids will be.
I've said for a long time that the present culture is the epitome of what men want....no morals, no ethics, no restraint...
they should be happy now right?.....they won...they got it all....
now with women acting just like men, suddenly men try to play the moral ones, the ones with ethics and restraint....
like, how dare those women act like us?....
bottom line is, women sadly have dragged themselves down to the men's level, because that is what men wanted, that is what our society and culture demand, and if that weren't true, why on freeperland does every thread about a women have to include a pic of that woman in tight dress or no dress....
males wanting the upper moral authority while not having any morals or values at all.
This thread needs more scantily clad women.
A few years ago I went shopping with my granddaughter and her preschool daughter. We were disgusted with the clothes for a little girl. What are they trying to do? Thankfully my granddaughter had the same opinion I did.
Once homosexuality/drug use has become mainstream progressives will look to their next conquest...legalizing pedophilia.
He should sue for discrimination. As a screaming faggot, he is ENTITLED to deviant and pervrse behaviour, right?
bump
women have seemed to wholeheartedly embrace today’s culture. men are just sperm donors when its wanted, dildos when that’s wanted, and wallets when that’s wanted.
It’s not just fashion lady, the next generation of kids are being taught to have zero morality or self-control
American Apparel makes Candies look wholesome.
I just googled Am. App. ads.
Porn is right. Barely legal, not yet legal, whatever the kiddie porn fetishists want to call it. Am. App. is porn with a little bit of fabric.
My youngest is never going to wear the most innocuous bit of clothing they make.
>> ‘Don’t tell us what to wear; teach the boys not to stare,’
One of the mantras of the Left is that “you can’t pray away the gay.” Yet, they think that they can change the hardwiring in ALL men’s minds by just telling them to not stare.
YEARS ago ... 1990 or so ... I tried to find leather tie shoes for my son (about 6 at the time)... lots of velcro ... no leather ... no shoestrings.
All children were sleazified ... but especially the mama's and papa's ... THEY WERE THE ONES BUYING AND PAYING TO MAKE THEIR DAUGHTERS LOOK LIKE TRAMPS
It’s the second or third generation and it’s getting “normalized”. Very sad.
Our government is leading the way:
Justice Dept Uses Lesbian Cartoon Characters To Teach Kids About Cell Phone Safety
>>now with women acting just like men, suddenly men try to play the moral ones, the ones with ethics and restraint....
When did straight men ever wear booty shorts or pants with form fitting pouches in the front that shape and lift and enhance their equipment? There was a very brief period during the disco era, but men quickly gave that up because it looked stupid.
When did fathers encourage their daughters to dress like whores, as most single moms do today with their daughters?
If men dressed like today’s women, we’d all be wearing painted gourds on our penises and nothing else, like those African tribesmen do.
Yeah!
bump
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