Short Shorts and the Women (and 12 year old girls) That Wear Them

I have a theory, a theory that each year is becoming more plausible. This theory is that clothing designers hate women. To clarify, I don't think designers hate women just because women have vagina and tits and they think we should be in the kitchen pregnant and cooking for them and their football buddies. The reason designers hate women is because we will buy ANYTHING if we're told it will make us look good. Take a bow, my gold lamé covered brethren. You've crushed the souls of another bevy of wanna be designers by choosing jeggings patterned after a cheetah. Good job!

Case in point- daisy dukes. There is no question which came first- the daisy duke or the designer daisy duke. In a rural humid Southern town somewhere, some girl with too tight pants decided that she should take her too tight pants and cut them off as short as possible so that all her greasy creases and crevasses could benefit from the sudden breeze. But then they caught on with the help of designers. Designers took something that should have stayed in backwoods Texas and spread it across America. I won't even make the obvious STD joke here because it's just too easy. The daisy dukes spread and now they haunt us in the form of a fashion statement that says not only are you slutty but you also have saggy labia. Thank you designers, thank you for that bold and unneeded statement.

What really offends me about daisy dukes isn't having to see people in Wal-Mart wear them because, really, if you go into Wal-Mart you know what you're getting. It's driving by the high school during lunch hour and not being able to tell which girls are students and which are prostitutes. And it doesn't stop at short shorts that would be more accurately categorized as panties. The slut-tastic clothing expression has spread to cover all areas of tween wear, including prom dresses. After doing a very scientific survey of my exotic dancer friends, it was 100% unanimously agreed that most of the clothing high school girls wear are TOO SLUTTY for the stage. Now that's impressive. Is this a high school student going to prom or turning into a pro? You tell me!

I used to be able to use Uggs as the tell-tale high school sign, but sadly that is no longer the case. The pros are getting comfortable in their footwear, which I can't blame them for. Which would you rather walk the streets in? Soft warm slipper-boots or 8-inch death traps? That's what I thought.
What's interesting is that as prostitutes get more comfortable, female high school students get less. Finding heels four inches and higher in the mall is normal, usually in stores geared towards girls 21 years old and less. How did we go from Uggs to stripper heels? We'll leave that for another post entitled "Heels: They make you look great, then you break your ankle."

Clothing P0rn

Note his saggy right testicle.

When did browsing the internet for ugly clothes become a constant dodging of pornographic images that would make your Dirty Uncle Larry feel bad? Oh right, always. But that doesn't make what American Apparel is doing right.

While listening to the soothing sounds of ocean and gulls screeching (seriously, they're piping in muzack to WEBSITES now) I realized something:

American Apparel's website is softcore porn.

Don't believe me?
-Step one, go to their website: American A-scare-l
-Step two, look at the pictures.
-Step three, agree with me.

Anyone who was born before the 90's remembers the Abercrombie and Fitch ad hoopla with naked men and horses, or the infamous CK basement commercial of the 90's. Sex sells but AA takes it to a level not seen since the start of Hustler magazine. It's all bad lighting and gauzy material, with models that look like they're either stoned, terrified, or a little of both. I keep expecting to see gigantic glorious bush every time I click on one of their panty links. Instead I get high-waisted panties my grandmother would have turned her nose up at.
(Does this girl look like she might not be enjoying her first modeling experience?)


Once past the opening barrage of softcore porn pictures, click on Women's Basics and behold the picture that assaults you. Nothing says "sell me underwear and socks" like a 16 year old model posed like she's ready to make her debut on the director's couch.

I'm also very glad that AA didn't waste any of the hard-earned money they made on overpriced socks and see-through pants by hiring a graphic designer to photoshop out their models' nipples. Male or female, it doesn't matter. I now have to go to sleep with this image burned into my brain:


Edit: In a very obvious bitchslap to my blog and me, American Apparel went and started selling these BUTT Magazine Towel. Touché, AA, touché.

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.