You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
kannunziato 's review for:
Strip Tees: A Memoir of Millennial Los Angeles
by Kate Flannery
Hmmm I’m not sure about this one! Flannery does a lot of work to assure us that despite it all, she was a feminist (she went to Bryn Mawr, after all!), but she nevertheless stayed at a company for about a decade where she was solely responsible for scouting and hiring young women, often teenage girls, who met an ideal image of someone her boss might like to sleep, and then, presumably, stood by while he did in fact sleep with them (she describes that likely happening at least once, and you have to assume it happened again)
She describes American Apparel as a type of “cult” (explicitly drawing the comparison to an actual cult member), and talks about being pulled in with a blindness to the toxicity of its culture but…after she purportedly shed her blinders and wised up just a few years in, she still stayed for more than a decade. A few failed interviews after just one year of experience doesn’t really justify staying on, particularly in her specific role, for 10+ years. There is no real reflection on this, just an effort to absolve herself after the fact and somewhat distance herself from the toxicity of this culture.
I don’t know. The story of this company culture itself feels worth telling - it’s certainly a look behind the curtain of a certain very specific time and place, with accompanying revelations. But I just find it hard to buy the author’s claims that she had some form of greater feminist awareness and disdain at the time. Hindsight is 20/20 and all that.
She describes American Apparel as a type of “cult” (explicitly drawing the comparison to an actual cult member), and talks about being pulled in with a blindness to the toxicity of its culture but…after she purportedly shed her blinders and wised up just a few years in, she still stayed for more than a decade. A few failed interviews after just one year of experience doesn’t really justify staying on, particularly in her specific role, for 10+ years. There is no real reflection on this, just an effort to absolve herself after the fact and somewhat distance herself from the toxicity of this culture.
I don’t know. The story of this company culture itself feels worth telling - it’s certainly a look behind the curtain of a certain very specific time and place, with accompanying revelations. But I just find it hard to buy the author’s claims that she had some form of greater feminist awareness and disdain at the time. Hindsight is 20/20 and all that.