Wow – Some really passionate American Apparel fans out there! Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised – My AA tank hugs me like no other tank does, and everyone says so.

Point well taken about the allegations of the women who are suing – as of yet, they are still just that – allegations. And thanks, alisa, for pointing out that Ari’s article itself is questionable. I thought I’d done my research, but obviously not enough. I might say I trust Business Week somewhat more; BW says former workers “told stories of senior managers who pursued sexual relationships with less senior colleagues and rewarded their favorites with promotions, company cars, and apartments.� This, if true, is a serious problem.

But I think the real issue that I’m trying to grapple with is the space between celebrating a woman’s sexual freedom – to be practiced as one desires, as in the case of the anonymous poster who likes to sleep with bosses – and the sexual coercion many women feel pressured by on a daily basis, at work and beyond.

Meaning that I’m happy for anonymous if she can get what she wants in her pussy (assuming anonymous is female) – more power to her. I would love to work in a sexually open environment, if it were a gender-egalitarian workplace. But as Shree Mulay, director of the McGill Centre for Research and Teaching on Women, points out in Montreal’s The Gazette (no link – got it thru Lexis-Nexis – free via school), “A lot of women may just go along and not make a noise about it (to keep their jobs).”

I think the “consensuality� of sex becomes difficult to back up in environments with unequal power and authority. And in our world, men usually have the power, and women often have to make the choice – go along with it, or keep the job. Yes, the choice is there. But the options, unless you really do wanna fuck your boss, are pretty unattractive.

And I personally would not like to have to pick between an oversexed work environment and a third-world-labor-exploitative one. My AA shopping’s still on hiatus, until I hear more about the lawsuits and policies.

**Update, 10/21/05: A new article about American Apparel by JANE’s Claudine Ko, and some more fully explained opinions on the part of green LA girl –

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