San Francisco-based Levi Strauss & Co is well known for human rights and labor crimes allegedly perpetrated in the factories that create their goods. And now they've chosen a new target for exploitation and abuse: The crack of your ass.
You know Levi's! They have that "plaza" in San Francisco, the naming rights to the stadium where the 49ers play...the only thing they haven't had is any factories based in the US since 2003.
Even before then, PBS reports, Levi's was dogged with labor horror stories, including exploitation of Chinese prison labor to make jeans in 1992 and repeated allegations of workers forced to work more than 12 hours a day without overtime pay in factories in China, Bangladesh and nearly 50 other countries.
In fact, again according to PBS, "Sweatshop workers in Saipan, a U.S. commonwealth exempt from American labor laws that stamps its clothing with 'Made in the U.S.A.' tags, were forced to pay recruitment fees of thousands of dollars. To work off the debt, they were kept in indentured servitude at factories. When a lawsuit against 26 of America’s largest clothing retailers—including the Gap, Target and Lane Bryant—over sweatshop abuses was settled in 2002, Levi Strauss was the only company that refused to settle."
Workers in that factory made "three dollars an hour in 2001. That same year, Levi Strauss CEO Philip Marineau made 25.1 million dollars—amounting to 11,971 dollars an hour."
For their part, Levi's says on their website that they have "completed pilots for the Worker Well-being initiative in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Egypt, Haiti and Pakistan."
So, anyway, keep that in mind as you mull a purchase of the company's newest offering which is called, I am not kidding, the “Wedgie Fit” jean. Again, not a joke. I checked.
As noted yesterday by Mashable, the jeans company promises that the new design will offer "The vintage look you love, tailored to show off your best assets." Because your best asset is your ass, not your brain, sense of humor, or how you AREN'T directly responsible for sweatshop abuse. OK!
Senior vice president of Levi's Global Design Jonathan Cheung tells Mashable that "the Wedgie is inspired by girls [who] were downsizing a vintage 505 and wearing it very close and almost vacuum-packed to the rear-ends — hence the affectionate and cheeky name."
The jeans also "include a high waist," Mashable reports, perfect for that tourist just in from the Midwest look! Between that that and the line's evocation of middle-school torture, it seems clear that Levi's mission to "get women back in jeans" has hit some snags. Then again, Levi's just broke its longstanding streak of financial declines last October, so maybe there's something to this wedgie thing after all.
