Threadbare: Clothes, Sex, and Trafficking

by The Ladydrawers (Illustrator)

Overview

Threadbare draws the connections between the international sex and garment trades and human trafficking in a beautifully illustrated comics series. Anne Elizabeth Moore, in reports illustrated by top-notch comics creators, pulls at the threads of gender, labor, and cultural production to paint a concerning picture of a human rights in a globalized world. Moore's reporting, illustrated by members of the Ladydrawers Comics Collective, takes the reader from the sweatshops of Cambodia to the traditional ateliers of Vienna, from the life of a globetrotting supermodel to the warehouses of large clothing retailers, from the secondhand clothing industry to the politics of the sex trade. With thoughtful illustrations of women's stories across the sex and garment supply chain, this book offers a practical guide to a growing problem few truly understand.

Featuring the work of Leela Corman, Julia Gfrörer, Simon Häussle, Delia Jean, Ellen Lindner, and Melissa Mendes.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781621067399
Publisher:	Microcosm Publishing
Publication date:	05/03/2016
Series:	Comix Journalism Series
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Anne Elizabeth Moore is an internationally renowned and bestselling cultural critic and comics journalist. Moore is a Fulbright scholar, UN Press Fellow, and USC Annenberg/Getty Arts Journalism Fellow, and teaches in the Visual & Critical Studies department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is a New York Times bestselling author and the founder of the Best American Comics series.

The Ladydrawers Comics Collective publishes accessible comics, texts, and films about how economics, race, sexuality, and gender impact the comics industry, other media, and our culture at large. Collective members who contributed to Threadbare include Leela Corman, Melissa Gira Grant, Julia Gfrörer, Sarah Jaffe, Delia Jean, Ellen Lindner, Melissa Mendes, and Anne Elizabeth Moore.

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Threadbare
"Threadbare takes us down the rabbit hole of the global fashion and textile industry, connecting the dots between the lives of the women who work at Forever 21 and the women who sew the clothes that hang on the racks there. With vivid storytelling and deep investigation. Anne Elizabeth Moore and her team of talented cartoonists prove the strength of comics as tool for translating impossible complexity to our everyday experience." —Jessica Abel, Out on the Wire and Drawing Words & Writing Pictures

“A fascinating look into the lives behind our clothes. From the people who make them, to the people who model them, to the people who sell them, our clothes are part of an intricate network which spans the globe. The art in Threadbare helps draw a personal connection to what might otherwise be overwhelming statistics, and gives an intimate look into the way the world is affected by what we buy.” —Sarah Glidden, author of Rolling Blackouts and How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less

"A compelling and comprehensive portrait of the human cost behind what we wear. The sharp, gorgeous, and distressing Threadbare will leave you questioning both your wardrobe and the state of the world as a whole." —Tim Hanley, author of Investigating Lois Lane: The Turbulent History of the Daily Planet's Ace Reporter and Wonder Woman Unbound: The Curious History of the World's Most Famous Heroine

"Describing the environmental, social, economic and personal costs of fast fashion in a style cool as gin, Threadbare is both a damning indictment and a stellar example of comics journalism." —Molly Crabapple, Drawing Blood

"Colleges offering degree programs in Fashion need to add this book to the curriculum. A must read!!!!" —Carol Tyler, Late Bloomer and You'll Never Know

"Well-researched, engaging, and full of surprising (and sometimes horrifying) statistics, you may finish reading this book and decide to become an activist—no longer shopping for clothes at your local mall and pressuring your elected officials for legislation that holds clothing manufacturers and retailers responsible." —Lisa Wilde, Yo, Miss: A Graphic Look at High School

"Threadbare is a brilliant amalgam of art, storytelling, consciousness-building, and old-fashioned muckraking. It takes on the enormous project of confronting the international apparel trade, through delving into individual stories and lifting up voices that are usually suppressed or ignored in mass media. The Ladydrawers collective and Anne Elizabeth Moore bring us face to face, literally, with the people most affected by labor exploitation and abuse - and in seeing their faces, we understand the realities beyond the facts. An intrepid journey!" —Maya Schenwar, editor-in-chief of Truthout, author of Locked Down, Locked Out: Why Prison Doesn’t Work and How We Can Do Better

Praise for the Ladydrawers
“Beautifully illustrated intellectual ammunition.” —ThinkProgress

“Depressing news, but the comic makes it a little easier to swallow.” —Bitch

“Making an art form out of researching and publishing findings that others might write or talk about.” —Forbes

“Wry.”—New York Times Magazine

Praise for Anne Elizabeth Moore
A “post-Empirical, proto-fourth-wave-feminist memoir-cum-academic abstract [that] makes our country’s Mommy Wars look like child’s play—and proves … why we should be paying attention to Cambodia’s record of human rights and gender equity.” —Bust Magazine (on New Girl Law)

“Attains the modest yet important success of making personal narratives and experience matter to critiques of history and globalization.”—Hyphen Magazine (on Cambodian Grrrl)

“A passionate, engaging, heartbreaking, funny, and inspiring book. I want to slip it into every tourist guide to Asia and give a copy to every girl in the world.” —Jean Kilbourne, author, filmmaker, and cultural critic (on Cambodian Grrrl)

“Anne Elizabeth Moore lets readers peer over her shoulder as she attempts the implausible. It turns out, the implausible is hard, and funny, and tragic, and illuminating, but once you sign up for the journey she never lets you look away. After reading what this woman accomplished in a few months, you might ask yourself some hard questions about how you spent last summer . . .” —Glynn Washington, NPR’s Snap Judgment (on Cambodian Grrrl)

“Cambodian Grrrl offers a compelling and spirited model of what is possible when media-making becomes a community endeavor. Don’t understand why media is a human rights issue? You will by the end of Anne Elizabeth Moore’s latest effort.” —Jennifer Pozner, Executive Director, Women In Media & News

“1000000000000000% punk rock.” —Jacksonville Public Library (on Cambodian Grrrl)

“Conversational, intellectually curious, and charmingly ragged, Unmarketable is an anti-corporate manifesto with a difference: It exudes raw coolness.”—Mother Jones (on Unmarketable)

Offers “something distinctly more radical than merely protesting against consumerism: a total rejection of the competitive ethos that drives capitalist culture.” —LA Times (on Unmarketable)

“This is a work of honesty and, yes, integrity.”—Kirkus (on Unmarketable)

“Sharp and valuable muckraking.” —Time Out New York (on Unmarketable)

From the Publisher

Threadbare: Clothes, Sex, And Trafficking, a comic history, provides its readers both an historic and a current understanding of fashion and how women were drawn into the industry. Each chapter is focused geographically, with the opening chapter centered on the United States. The first comic, “Fast Fashion,” includes a breakdown of what a family earned versus what they spent in 1901, with 14% of their wages going to fashion; and how a century later, an equivalent family only puts 4% towards apparel. Other strips go into more personal stories, like that of Sarah Meir, a semi-retired model whose career put her in the room with many important people and set her off around the world. Other stories throughout the book focus on sweatshops, warehouses, even second-hand clothing. Using its graphic format, Threadbare illustrates the connections between the various elements of the fashion industry, tying them into a greater understanding of a global problem. While this book will likely not have large appeal, it could find an audience with older teens and college students, especially in larger public libraries, academic libraries, or special collections. Reviewer: Shana Morales; Ages 17 to Adult.

VOYA, August 2016 (Vol. 39, No. 3) - Shana Morales

05/15/2016
As Moore (Unmarketable) relates, the variety and quantity of cheap clothing offered to consumers in developed countries comes at a price. Relying on factories in poorer nations allows distributors such as H&M to sell items at lower costs. These workhouses employ largely women, providing them with needed income yet at meager wages and in miserable, nonunionized environments—true also for some U.S. fashion industry jobs. Here 22 graphic vignettes delve into exploitative conditions in the United States, Austria, and Cambodia, and then summarize impacts spanning countries. Narratives relate to fashion models, factory workers, salespeople, international trade agreements, foreign-trade zones, antisex trafficking efforts, and the vicious-cycle interplay between working in the garment business vs. the sex industry. The six artists from Ladydrawers (a webcomics collaboration on truthout.org) intersperse content from interviews with background information in a variety of styles, all enhanced by single-tone highlights in the rose-orange spectrum. While little content addresses possible remedies, or equivalent problems with male employment, these pieces tellingly demonstrate what harmful effects may be associated with this type of overproduction and overconsumption. VERDICT Useful and engrossing for fashion watchers and women's issues activists, teens, and adults.—MC

Library Journal