Dov Charney: Prince of corporate misogyny, master of sweat shops

Edit: In my rage about this topic I decided to e-mail CafePress about this sooner rather than later. Read what I had to say here. We’ll see what they write back. That said, I can only reiterate again that I love CafePress and they have amazing brands like Hanes and Econscious on board.

Before I get into my angry rant against American Apparel’s founder and CEO Dov Charney, I have two things to let you know about, dear readers: One, I forgot to mention in my post on Wednesday that Zellers (at least the one near our house) does not carry sewing fabrics. Some of you found our blog by searching for answers to this question, so I am answering it now. Secondly, I’m happy to announce that one of Canadian Tire’s Shark sewing machines is actually on sale this week. It’s not the one we have but it has pretty good reviews and it’s also a Shark machine. And it’s half-price! Yay!

American Apparel's founder and CEO Dov Charney. Yup.

So why, you ask, have I chosen to write about Dov Charney today?

Dov Charney, as many of you may know, is the founder and CEO of American Apparel. He is also the 41-year-old mastermind behind the company’s recent search for “the world’s best bottom” which encouraged young women and men to send in pictures of their behinds to “win” the fantastic chance of being the new “face” (ahem) of American Apparel. Are you grossed out yet?

Anyway, back to why I feel compelled to write about this today (other than the obvious, which is that Dov Charney is clearly filthy and disgusting.)

CafePress, the company we use to print and sell our Vintage Pirates apparel gets their blanks from different clothing companies. And, yep, you guessed it, American Apparel is one of them. Now I am not mad at CafePress for this, and while I plan on inquiring about it at one point, I am not going to judge them based on one wonky corporate decision, because their printing services are great and the majority of their blanks are not from American Apparel (Thank God!) Also, I understand that American Apparel is generally quite popular for their alleged (more about that in a second) no-sweatshop policy and their hipster style. Each to his own, I say to that.

In any case we, as in the Vintage Pirates, will pull any American Apparel products we’ve used so far from our store. Which is luckily not much because, like I said before, CafePress mostly uses other companies like Hanes. Hanes, by the way, is right at the other end of the ethical spectrum, which makes me very happy. Check out their environmental and social responsibilities pages if you’re curious.

Back to Dov Charney. Now there may be some of you out there who will read this and say “but none of the sexual harassment lawsuits against him were ever proven!” Well, no, they were not, but he did admit to masturbating in front of a female reporter during an interview some years back. Have a look at an article Businessweek published about this in June, 2005:

“The suits follow a bizarre article last year in the women’s magazine Jane. Charney was described as engaging in oral sex with a female employee and masturbating in front of the reporter. Charney doesn’t deny taking part in any of the activities described in the article. He says he befriended the writer over the course of the two months it took her to research the piece. “I’ve never done anything sexual that wasn’t consensual,” Charney says. The reporter, Claudine Ko, confirmed his take on events to BusinessWeek.”

Oh and while this particular case was “consensual”, what about the “consensual” relations he achieves by requesting things mentioned in an article by the Independent in late 2006?

“Does ethical treatment of his employees extend to asking his assistants to pleasure him sexually, as he has happily acknowledged doing?”

I don’t think it’s even necessary to point out how these types of “requests” may have influenced his, mostly immigrant, employees who for the most part probably, probably, would feel afraid to refuse him in fear of losing their jobs. Hey, I know I’m speculating a bit here, but if you take a look at American Apparel’s ad campaigns (have a look at some of the ones posted here, for instance) most of his models are very young and therefore probably quite easily influenced.

Moving on.

American Apparel’s biggest selling point is that Dov Charney claims it to be “sweatshop-free.” Okay, so what’s the definition of a sweatshop?

Wikipedia says this:

“Sweatshop (also known as “sweat factory”) is a working environment with unhealthy conditions that are considered by many people of industrialized nations to be difficult or dangerous, usually where the workers have few opportunities to address their situation.”

Does sexual harassment count as an unhealthy condition? I think so, yes. Don’t believe Wikipedia? Okay, here’s the Encyclopedia Britannica:

“Workplace in which workers are employed at low wages and under unhealthy or oppressive conditions.”

Oppressive? As in not allowed to form a union to protect their rights?

Here is what Dov Charney said to David Greenburg in an interview with the LA Business Journal in May, 2004: “To me, an anti-union effort is about frustrating workers rights to unionize by firing workers or limiting their job opportunities or threatening to close down a factory. The concept of a union is a check against greed on the part of the employer. If I really wanted to be motivated by greed alone and pay the lowest possible wage, I wouldn’t be working in this factory. To say, “Let’s appoint a union to represent the workers even further” may put into disequilibrium the delicate balance that I’ve created between all the parties.”

Isn’t that between the lines speak for “we don’t want a union because I’d have less power over my employees?” Ironically enough, American Apparel itself posted this article in their news feed.

Anyway, I could go on forever about this, but then you’d probably grow bored of this and/or I would ruin your weekend by inducing anger against the gargantuan rip-off that is American Apparel in you.

So I will leave you with a few more interesting reads, if you’d like to continue researching this issue like I did late last night. There are two pretty good articles on Jezebel.com, here and here, and there is a pretty good blog rant, much like mine, on LiveJournal. There are also tons of bigger news stories about all five (!!!) sexual harassment lawsuits that were filed against Dov Charney over the past few years if you google them. So there’s no need for you to point out that I’ve quoted quite a few gossipy sites here, because the

bigger papers out there have written about this too.

Meet Dov: Dirty, middle-aged man in pink underwear.

To wrap this up, I think it’s obvious why we’ll be pulling American Apparel from our own store. I’m not a huge feminist on any level,but when someone uses slogans like “Women initiate most domestic violence, yet out of a thousand cases of domestic violence, maybe one is involving a man. And this has made a victim culture out of women,” and “Feminism is restrictive,” then all I can say is you, Dov Charney, are a misogynist a**hole and I hope karma bites you in your pink-clad weeny one day and you come back as a firehydrant near a dog pound one day.

’nuff said.

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