This Week’s Haute Links
Savvy shoppers hock the Jimmy Choos they got at H&M for double retail price on eBay- The Cut
Twitter Killed the Celeb Star- The Black Snob
‘Unfriend’ is a New Oxford Dictionary’s Word of the Year (Among Others)- USA Today
Sarah Palin’s Stylist Outs Herself- The Cut
Dear Chris Rock: Let Black Women ‘Do Our Own Hair- The Black Snob
FYI On Personal Email and the Law-WSJ Law Blawg
Mangagement Ring Trend Means It’s the Ladies’ Turn to Put a Ring On It – NY Daily News
Burberry, LV and More at a CostCo Near You- Fashion Bomb Daily
Wintour Hires Obama Online Campaign Masterminds for Vogue.com- Fashionologie
This Week’s Haute Links
Michelle Obama’s Brooches Are ‘Part of Her Code’: The Cut
Racism AND Sexism at the NY Post?: The Black Snob
Andre Leon Talley and Kimmora Lee Simons to judge America’s Next Top Model: Gatecrasher
Lawyer’s have invented a new defense to trademark counterfeiting : Counterfeit Chic
Meet the New Black Model on the Block, Kelly Moreira: The Cut
Did Northwestern Students Pay Witnesses for False Testimony?: WSJ Law Blog
EEk! Fashion Industry Downsizes: Layoffs Lomming at Zac Posen, Gucci: Gatecrasher
Lou Dobbs Quits CNN: AverageBro
Asked and Answered: Miss J of Top Model (Whose book released this week, btw): The Moment
Empire State of Mind: Garance Dore
Love Letter: The Stylish Wanderer
The Future Modelling of Sudan Parade: Style Discovery
Chanel Iman Went Blonde: Design Scene
When Fashion and the Law Collide: American Apparel (Again)
American Apparel, the largest garment manufacturer in the U.S., and “arguably the most vocal” in speaking up against U.S. immigration policies, is terminating about 1,500 employees at its Los Angeles factory, because they were unable to prove their immigration status or fix problems with their employment records. This after a government inspection uncovered that close to 1,600 of the manufacturer/retailer’s workers didn’t appear to be authorized to work in the U.S.
The debate over how a country built on immigration should manage its new immigrant workforce exploded into mass demonstrations in several major cities in 2006. American Apparel was a leader in the campaign to legalize foreign workers, saying that it is good for business.
Policy overhaul efforts failed in Congress in 2007, and both presidential candidates said they supported humane reform, but kept quiet on the subject in the months leading to the election on November 4, 2008. The dramatic tailspin of financial markets and the slowing U.S. economy has pushed the immigration issue even further into the background, a situation that American Apparel has tried to challenge.
Large workplace sweeps by U.S. immigration police hit meat-processing and electronics plants across the country in late 2008, and Homeland Security released a list this past July of 652 businesses nationwide that would receive audits (I-9) of its workforce. American Apparel was one of them. The company has never been raided, but it has had to let workers go whose papers are discovered to be false in the past. An attorney working for the company on the audit said the results showed no wrongdoing by the company.
Despite the dismissal of more than 10% of its workforce, AA doesn’t expect problems with productivity, since, well, “the confluence of several factors including the slow economy and high preexisting inventory levels,” said the attorney. So what does that mean? Get your bootys over to American Apparel and buy something!
When Fashion and the Law Collide: Salacious Obscenities
One visit to the American Apparel website, and it’s clear that they aren’t just selling T-shirts (that I so adore). Adolescent-looking models, with dear caught in headlights expressions, in “come hither” poses, are like, well, the retailers trademark. And nipples are often exposed.
Attitudes regarding nudity in Western cultures are often more critical than attitudes in non-western cultures. For example, in the U.S., exposure of female nipples is a criminal offense in many states and are not allowed in public at all, while in the U.K., nudity may not be used to “harass, alarm or distress” according to the Public Order Act of 1986.
However, it was a British advertising watchdog that recently criticized the clothing company for the ad pictured below, after a reader complained to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) that the ad, which originally ran on the back cover of Vicemagazine in the U.K., but with a series of six images — instead of three — in which the model further disrobes from her flex fleece and where her nipple was partially exposed in one shot, was “offensive and inappropriate because the model appeared young and it could be seen to sexualize a child.” Reuters reports:
American Apparel said that it did not think the partial nudity in the advertisement would cause widespread offense. It said that the model was 23 years old and did not look under 16, nor was she portrayed as a sex object. (because you look naturally sexy wearing a hoodie, right?)
The ASA disagreed, calling the images “provocative,” and adding,
“Because the ad could be seen to sexualize a model who appeared to be a child under the age of 16 years, we concluded that it was inappropriate and could cause serious offense to some readers.”
Sexual materials range between erotic art (which usually includes “classic nude forms” such as Michelangelo’s David statue) and the generally less respected commercial pornography. The differentiation between sexual materials is a particularly difficult one and a contentious First Amendment issue that has not fully been settled. Many cultures have produced laws to define what is considered to be “obscene”, and censorship is often used to try to suppress or control materials that are obscene under these definitions. The definition differs from culture to culture, between communities within a single culture, and also between individuals within those communities.
In the United States, the 1973 ruling of the Supreme Court of the United States in Miller v. California established a three-tiered test to determine what was obscene – and thus not protected, versus what was merely erotic and thus protected by the First Amendment.
Delivering the opinion of the court, Chief Justice Warren Burger wrote,
The basic guidelines for the trier of fact must be: (a) whether ‘the average person, applying contemporary community standards would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest, (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.
The legal distinction between artistic nudity, and permitted commercial pornography (which includes sexual penetration) that are deemed as “protected forms of speech” versus “obscene acts”, which are illegal acts and separate from those permitted areas, are usually separated by the predominant culture appreciation regarding such. In fact, federal obscenity law in the U.S. is highly unusual in that—not only is there no uniform national standard, but rather, there is an explicit legal precedent that all but guarantees that something that is legally “obscene” in one jurisdiction may not be in another. In effect, the First Amendment protections of free speech vary by location within the U.S., and over time.
However, “mere nudity” was upheld in the Supreme Court case Jenkins v. Georgia , 418 U.S. 153 (1974) and deemed not to be obscene under the constitutional standards announced by Miller. As declared by the judge at trial “… nudity alone does not render material obscene under Miller’s standards.” In the U.S., the word “obscenity” is usually limited to content that directly refers to explicit sexual acts that are publicly accessible, though it has at times encompassed other subject matters, such as spoken and written language that can be publicly transmitted and received by the general public.
With the advent of Internet distribution of potentially obscene material, this question of jurisdiction and “community standards” has created significant controversy in the legal community. So, while the nude content was offensive to some in the U.K. community and it has been banned from distribution through print publication (so that no one else will happen to glance over at the doctor’s office or on public transit to be incited with disgust), the online community isn’t as easily offended by nudity, perhaps, and hasn’t spoken out. So, if you’re in the U.K., and want to see bare nipples, then you’ll have to go to American Apparel’s website, where nipples run free, although, I couldn’t find the other three photos on the website either, only the ones pictured above (there are plenty others, however).
What do you think of the racy advertisements? Offensive? Not offensive?
First Lady Michelle Obama on TIME
TIME magazine interviewed the First Lady for the article “The Meaning of Michelle Obama.” In the interview, the First Lady told the mag,
I tried not to come into this with too many expectations one way or the other. I felt like part of my job — and I still feel like that — is to be open to where this needs to go.
Read TIME’s complete interview with the first Lady here.
Making History: Michelle O. on the Cover of O Magazine!
Oprah has never had anyone else on the cover of her O. Magazine. Until now. The April cover will feature both Oprah herself and the First Lady, Michelle Obama. That’s such exciting, fabulous news!!!
Read My Lips!
I wanted a space where I could make a big fuss, say what I’m thinking, further discuss what I and my friends are talking about, or, not. Call it two-faced, gossiping, drama-queen-ish, whatever. Here it is.
CAUTION: read at your own risk. What you’ll find is a whole lot of talk about fashion (or anything else that I find just plain fabulous). Because I love it. It’s always on my mind. Or, talk about any of the 50 catrillion thoughts that cross my mind at any given time, which will often include, but will not be limited to my opinion on something someone else said or did. The truth hurts. So, I’m not always inclined to say such things out loud, cause I’m a lady. But, here is where I will exercise my freedom of expression.
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