Thank you, AA, for making my job easy.

I have a confession to make. Despite my abundance of vitriol for all things American Apparel, I have shopped there a time or two. Why, you might ask, would I shop there if I think all their clothing should be burned at the stake like they were a woman with an obvious mole used to suckle the devil? I'm not too proud to admit, I wanted to believe the hype. I wanted to put on some tight legging-pants and feel immediately awesome, like I should be hanging out with my similarly-attired friends at the local coffee shop where we will all immediately get out our various electronic devices and tweet about it so everyone else will know WE'RE HAVING A GREAT TIME! I wanted a gold bodysuit with black piping that made me look like I belonged in a dark basement with a Calvin Klein photographer asking me personal questions while I stretched and posed on the stairs. I wanted leg warmers that got me warm AND made me cool. And the clothes at American Apparel could make me this way, dammit!

Needless to say, it did not work out that way. High-waisted dresses, shirts cut for girls with nipples but no actual breasts, and bikini tops the size of band-aids do not work for a curvy girl with tatas that have more than once been classified as "Epic". I did find some leg warmers that I liked and they definitely made me feel cool for a while... until I washed them. Nothing says awesome more than knitted bags draped around your ankles to hide the case of cankles that made it into Scientific American last year.

For a whole year I would repeat this cycle of abuse: Jenna sees something that is shiny and new, Jenna decides in her head that nothing would be more awesome than this one thing, Jenna goes in and tries it on and finds it is the furthest thing from awesome and rages about it. A month or two goes by, Jenna somehow magically forgets that every time she walks into AA her eyes bleed and her skin grows dry and flaky with hate. Jenna sees a new ad for something shiny and repeats cycle. After a year of this, Andru finally declared the rarely used HUSBAND BAN. Jenna was not allowed to go into AA any more. Jenna accepted this ban because she knew it was for her own good, even if she would miss the adrenaline of a good rage.

And so peace reigned across the land... until I saw this: Offbrand American Apparel Code for Fat and Ugly. And the thought came to me that the hiring people of AA have a VERY different definition of "ugly" than I do. Because come on. What sex trafficker are they in cahoots with to find a model willing to take a picture that looks like this?

But, to be fair, American Apparel started in 1989 which is fairly recent. It takes time to create and develop a breeding program that will take an ugly clothing brand into the next century. But breed and develop they have and now we have a whole new generation of sad on the inside but sassy on the outside models to look forward to. The description from Playgrounder.com says it all: "Bring some glam to your child’s wardrobe. Kids will love the iridescent lamé construction, and aspiring dancers will appreciate the form-fitting style."

Indeed, kids will love it. And that's the tragedy.