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.
It’s the second or third generation and it’s getting “normalized”. Very sad.
***
So true.
Cute kids.
Men are visual; it’s how they’re wired. If girls put it all out there, men are going to look. If the females have a problem with it, sartorial adjustments are in order.
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Well said!
Darned if that isn’t a cute pic.
“Yet, they think that they can change the hardwiring in ALL men’s minds by just telling them to not stare.”
Wait until they meet the Hispanic replacement Americans; they won’t just undress them with their eyes and make comments; they’ll do that to females as young as 10.
Truly gross, and slow to acclimate to the wussified American culture.
I come from a family of 11, I am one below the exact middle child, and we were always taught to look out for the younger ones. It’s a wonderful, character building experience. And we siblings are very close to this day. My 71-year-old sister is my best friend.
“Years ago, I was posting on a political message board, and the leftwing women posters claimed they would support their daughters becoming prostitutes if it was what they really wanted to do.”
They’re just spouting crap to pretend they’re PC; wait until they face the real possibility, and they’ll walk through fire to get those daughters away from “the life”. I mean, it only took Cher about twenty years to admit her daughter was a mental case...
>>Wait until they meet the Hispanic replacement Americans
That’s true for just about all men, except for European Americans. We cling to our Puritan/Victorian morals while most other men in the world call it how they see it.
This whole “we’ll dress like whores and you aren’t allowed to notice” thing is just passive-aggressive sexual harassment aimed at caucasian American men.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gx9eDoS76LM
If you can add a drive along the Amalfi Coast to your bucket list it is worth your while.
“This whole “we’ll dress like whores and you aren’t allowed to notice” thing is just passive-aggressive sexual harassment aimed at caucasian American men.”
Sure, though these women will deal with more and more “other” men.
Good point.
>>Sure, though these women will deal with more and more “other” men.
Yep. Already happening. The men that pursue them and call them and stare are the ones they notice. It’s the “Bad Boy” paradox. They only date bad boys and then complain that they never meet any “nice” guys. Dr Laura noticed this decades ago. American women are the most self-destructive people in the world.
It’s become hard to tell. The 14-year-olds dress 25 and the 25-year-olds act 14. :)
Thank you, Bigg Red.
You’re probably right. That message board, back in the late ‘90s, was my first real exposure to leftwing insanity.
:-)
Hi we are about the same age. You are slightly less nerdy tho, per the picture.
yep.
if they don’t want anyone to watch the commercials, then they shouldn’t advertise...
Actually the type of man you describe used to be the sort who wanted to marry A VIRGIN who would never look at another man and would bear children he could be certain belonged to him while having his “LOOSE” women on the side and there were plenty of men who did NOT want the loose women on the side, they just wanted a faithful wife and mother for their children. Considerably different from “....no morals, no ethics, no restraint...” That sort of man definitely does NOT have everything he always wanted now. The chance of marrying a virgin is close to nil and the chance of marrying someone who will be faithful in marriage is nearly as bad. My personal advice to any young man contemplating marriage now would be forget it. Most of the young women I see in stores shopping now look about as attractive as a chicken gizzard and chopped liver sandwich. Some of them look as if they have expended a lot of time and effort in trying to make themselves totally UNattractive. The tattoos, piercings, weird hair, fat bellies, strange clothes etc. are the total opposite of what any sane man would be looking for and very few seem to have all that great a personality and even fewer seem to be thinkers. Not that the young men are any more impressive than the girls. Actual conversation seems to be too much of a challenge for many of them.
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