Where am I Wearing? E-Book

Kelsey Timmerman

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Serie: Where am I?
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 476

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

A journalist travels the world to trace the origins of our clothes When journalist and traveler Kelsey Timmerman wanted to know where his clothes came from and who made them, he began a journey that would take him from Honduras to Bangladesh to Cambodia to China and back again. Where Am I Wearing? intimately describes the connection between impoverished garment workers' standards of living and the all-American material lifestyle. By introducing readers to the human element of globalization--the factory workers, their names, their families, and their way of life--Where Am I Wearing bridges the gap between global producers and consumers. * New content includes: a visit to a fair trade Ethiopian shoe factory that is changing lives one job at time; updates on how workers worldwide have been squeezed by rising food costs and declining orders in the wake of the global financial crisis; and the author's search for the garment worker in Honduras who inspired the first edition of the book * Kelsey Timmerman speaks and universities around the country and maintains a blog at www.whereamiwearing.com. His writing has appeared in the Christian Science Monitor and Condé Nast Portfolio, and has aired on NPR. Enlightening and thought-provoking at once, Where Am I Wearing? puts a human face on globalization.

Leseprobe

Contents

Preface

Prologue: We have it Made

Part I: The Mission

Chapter 1: A Consumer Goes Global

Chapter 2: Tattoo’s Tropical Paradise

Chapter 3: Fake Blood, Sweat, and Tears

Part II: My Underwear: Made in Bangladesh

Chapter 4: Jingle these

Chapter 5: Undercover in the Underwear Biz

Chapter 6: Bangladesh Amusement Park

Chapter 7: Inside My First Sweatshop

Chapter 8: Child Labor in Action

Chapter 9: Arifa, the Garment Worker

Chapter 10: Hope

Chapter 11: No Black and White, Only Green

Update for Revised Edition: Hungry for Choices

Part III: My Pants: Made in Cambodia

Chapter 12: Labor Day

Chapter 13: Year Zero

Chapter 14: Those Who Wear Levi’s

Chapter 15: Those Who Make Levi’s

Chapter 16: Blue Jean Machine

Chapter 17: Progress

Chapter 18: Treasure and Trash

Update for Revised Edition: The Faces of Crisis

Part IV: My Flip-Flops: Made in China

Chapter 19: PO’ed VP

Chapter 20: Life at the Bottom

Chapter 21: Growing Pains

Chapter 22: The Real China

Chapter 23: On a Budget

Chapter 24: An All-American Chinese Walmart

Chapter 25: The Chinese Fantasy

Update for Revised Edition: Migration

Part V: Made in America

Chapter 26: For Richer, for Poorer

Update for Revised Edition: Restarting, Again

Chapter 27: Return to Fantasy Island

Chapter 28: Amilcar’s Journey

Chapter 29: An American Dream

Chapter 30: Touron Goes Glocal

Appendix A: Discussion Questions

Appendix B: Note to Freshman Me

Appendix C: Where Are You Teaching?

Acknowledgments

Copyright © 2012 by Kelsey Timmerman. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, [phone], fax [phone], or on the web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, [phone], fax [phone], or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.

For general information on our other products and services or for technical support, please contact our Customer Care Department within the United States at [phone], outside the United States at [phone] or fax [phone].

Wiley publishes in a variety of print and electronic formats and by print-on-demand. Some material included with standard print versions of this book may not be included in e-books or in print-on-demand. If this book refers to media such as a CD or DVD that is not included in the version you purchased, you may download this material at http://booksupport.wiley.com. For more information about Wiley products, visit www.wiley.com.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Timmerman, Kelsey, 1979–

Where Am I Wearing?: A Global Tour to the Countries, Factories, and People That Make Our Clothes / Kelsey Timmerman. — Rev. and updated.

p. cm.

ISBN: 978-1-118-27755-3 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-118-35608-1 (ebk)

ISBN: 978-1-118-35609-8 (ebk)

ISBN: 978-1-118-35610-4 (ebk)

1. Clothing trade. 2. Clothing workers. 3. Wages—Clothing workers. 4. Consumers—Attitudes. I. Title.

HD9940.A2T56 2012

338.4′7687—dc23

2012003583

To all the people who make the clothes I wear.

And to Annie,

who makes sure all the clothes I wear match.

We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

—Martin Luther King Jr.

Preface

Below me is the Caribbean. Behind me is a global adventure that changed my life and the way I live it. Ahead of me is Honduras, where all of this began six years ago.

The world has changed since I last visited Honduras and stood in front of the factory where my T-shirt was made.

The first edition of this book came out in November of 2008. You likely remember this as a time where any investments you held suddenly halved. Jobs were lost. Home values continued to plummet. In other words, it was a great time to have a book come out.

“The world is coming to an end,” a crazed-hair friend may have warned. “Better stock up on guns and gold! Oh, by the way, have you heard about this book called Where Am I Wearing? This fella named Kelsey went to Bangladesh because his underwear were made there! It’s only $25, which is about how much your stock portfolio lost in the last five minutes.”

Bullet sales in the United States went up 49 percent while book sales dropped 9 percent, but the down economy had a much wider impact than the publishing industry and the lives of first-time authors. The global financial crisis impacted every single person I met on my global quest to meet the people who made my clothes. Food prices skyrocketed. Arifa, the single mother of three in Bangladesh, was now forced to spend over half of her income on rice for her family. Sixty-four million people fell into extreme poverty—living on less than $1.25 per day. Eighty-two million more people were going hungry.

Orders for just about everything declined, and global unemployment increased by 34 million. The blue jean factory at which Nari and Ai—two of the workers I met in Cambodia—worked closed. There were reports of workers—primarily women in their late teens and early 20s—turning to prostitution. Were Nari and Ai and the others I met in Cambodia among them?

My wardrobe has changed, but not as much as I have.

Since I last sat on a plane nosing toward San Pedro Sula, Honduras, I got married and had two kids. I see the world through a dad’s eyes now. Eyes that water when I watch Toy Story 3 with my daughter, Harper. Eyes that look toward a future beyond my own. Eyes that better see where I fit in as a local citizen in my hometown of Muncie, Indiana, and where I fit in as a global citizen. This second edition of Where Am I Wearing? is essentially about the sacrifices parents and children make for one another in the hopes of a better life. Until I looked upon my own children, I only saw the world through the invincible eyes of a son. Having kids changed me, but so did the mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers I met tracking down who made my clothes and where.

The other day I was on a stage at one of the universities that selected this book for their freshman common reader program. All incoming freshmen read and discussed the book—an amazing experience to have as an author. This particular university dressed me in regalia—Harry Potter robes with shoulder pads sans magic wand. I tried to convince the university that if they make an author wear regalia they should give him an honorary degree, but they wouldn’t bite. (I would have questioned their integrity if they had.) I felt silly. Then I clicked to the first slide of my presentation—a 20-foot-tall picture of Arifa in Bangladesh—and completely forgot about the pomp and circumstance.

When I met Arifa in Bangladesh, I had no idea I would be able to share her story in the way that I have. There was no promise of a book. But there I stood before 1,500 students and faculty, and they all knew her name. They all knew her story. I’ve stood on other stages at universities and high schools across the country, and it never gets old. It is an absolute honor to share her story and all of the others.

When my editor, Richard, called me about updating this book, I was in the middle of brushing my daughter’s teeth. He asked me if I had any ideas for new material. Boy, did I.

I’ve always felt that this book was missing something. The whole experience began in Honduras where I followed my favorite T-shirt’s tag. At first it was an excuse to travel. I went jungle hiking, SCUBA diving, and taught an entire island village to play baseball. But when I showed up at the factory and met a worker named Amilcar, I completely chickened out. I didn’t ask the questions I wanted to know about him: Does this job provide a better life for you and your family? What do you get paid? What are the working conditions like? And so on. I think deep down I really didn’t want to know about the realities of Amilcar’s life, so I didn’t ask.

Not knowing what life was like for Amilcar or any of the other garment workers around the world really began to eat at me. So I pulled out a pile of clothes and went to Bangladesh, Cambodia, and China—this time to ask the questions I wanted to know.

But what about Amilcar? All of this started with him. While I have a somewhat better idea of what his life might be like, I still don’t really know.

But now I’m going to find out.

I’m armed with two out-of-focus 5 × 7’s of Amilcar. He’s wearing the shirt that was made in his factory and a grin that says, “Some gringo came all the way here to give me this shirt, and now he’s standing next to me with no shirt?” I’ve got the photos, I know his name, and I know where he was employed six years ago. That’s about it.

In addition to my search for Amilcar, I’ve included updates at the end of each section about what life is like for the workers who I’ve been able to keep in touch with—as well as what life might be like for those whom I haven’t. I’ve also added more about my adventures to be an engaged consumer, which have taken me as far as a shoe factory in Ethiopia, and as near as the Goodwill a few blocks from my house. I’ve highlighted some additional companies that are changing the world one job at a time, included a few new tips to help you on your journey to become an engaged consumer, and compiled a chapter-by-chapter discussion guide to help guide your book club or class discussions.

In a way, this adventure is an explanation of what I did with my college education. My degree—a bachelor of arts in anthropology from Miami University—hangs on the wall of my office. The degree is worth less than the frame that holds it—because I never got a job due to my degree in anthropology. But the curiosity for the world that my studies inspired and the empathy that anthropology taught me have been priceless. They helped me find my way. Still, I look back on my college experience with some regret, so I’ve written a “Letter to Freshman Me” at the end of the book. It’s the kick in the pants I wish I had had as a freshman. Since so many freshmen across the country start their college careers reading this book, I hope they will find it useful.

My Where Am I Wearing? adventure changed the way I see the world, the way I give and volunteer, and the way I shop. The people I met have inspired me to be a better neighbor, consumer, donor, volunteer, and a better glocal (global and local) citizen. I’ve learned that we can’t always control the impact that invisible forces like globalization have on our life, but we can control the impact our life has on the world. And all of this started with Amilcar in Honduras.

Most of me hopes I find him, but part of me doesn’t. I’m worried what the past six years have meant for him. Wherever he is, he’s 31 now. Maybe he has a family. Maybe he still works at the garment factory. Maybe. Maybe. “Maybe” has haunted me since that fateful day in 2005 when I met Amilcar.

I scan the notes that 26-year-old me scrawled, and I stare out at the blue beyond. I turn back to the 5 × 7’s of Amilcar.

Maybe it’s time to find out.

—Kelsey Timmerman

Prologue

We Have It Made

I was made in America. My Jingle These Christmas boxers were made in Bangladesh.

I had an all-American childhood in rural Ohio. My all-American blue jeans were made in Cambodia.

I wore flip-flops every day for a year when I worked as a SCUBA diving instructor in Key West. They were made in China.

One day while staring at a pile of clothes on the floor, I noticed the tag of my favorite T-shirt read: MADE IN HONDURAS.

I read the tag. My mind wandered. A quest was born.

Where am I wearing? It seems like a simple question with a simple answer. It’s not.

This question inspired the quest that took me around the globe. It cost me a lot of things, not the least of which was my consumer innocence. Before the quest, I could put on a piece of clothing without reading its tag and thinking about Arifa in Bangladesh or Dewan in China, about their children, their hopes and dreams, and the challenges they face.

Where am I wearing isn’t so much a question related to geography and clothes, but about the people who make our clothes and the texture of their lives. This quest is about the way we live and the way they live; because when it comes to clothing, others make it, and we have it made. And there’s a big, big difference.

PART I

The Mission

CHAPTER 1

A Consumer Goes Global

The Mississinawa Valley High School class of 1997 voted me Best Dressed Guy. This isn’t something I usually share with people. You should feel privileged I told you. Don’t be too impressed; there were 51 members of the class of 1997, only 29 were guys, and rural Ohio isn’t exactly the fashion capital of anywhere.

I would like to think that I won the award for my stellar collection of Scooby-Doo and Eric Clapton T-shirts, but I know what clinched it—junior high, when my mom still dressed me. Basically, I was the Bugle Boy. You might not remember the brand of clothing known as Bugle Boy, but you probably remember their commercials where the sexy model in the sports car stops to ask the guy stranded in the desert: “Excuse me, are those Bugle Boy jeans you are wearing?” I had entire Bugle Boy outfits.

As far as most consumers are concerned, clothes come from the store. Consumers don’t see the chain of transportation and manufacturing that comes before they take the pants off the rack. Clothes came even later in the chain for me during this time—from gift boxes on holidays or birthdays or just magically appearing on my bed with Post-it notes hanging from the tags:

“Kels, try these on and let me know if they fit—Mom.”

I really didn’t care much about clothes until they were comfortable—jeans with holes, black T-shirts faded to gray—and then it was about time to stop wearing them anyhow. If clothing made it to this extremely comfortable stage, I normally established some kind of emotional attachment to it and stashed it away.

My closet and drawers were museums of me.

In high school, I remember Kathie Lee Gifford, the beloved daytime talk show host, crying on television as she addressed allegations that her clothing line was being made by children in Honduras. I remember Disney coming under similar fire, but I didn’t wear clothes from either of these lines. I had bigger problems in those days, such as, finding time to wash my dirty car or how I was going to ask Annie, the hustling sophomore shooting guard with the big brown eyes, to the homecoming dance.

Globalization was a foreign problem of which I was blissfully unaware. I did know that it existed, and that I was against it. Everybody was. My friends’ fathers had lost their jobs and their pensions when local factories closed or were bought out. Huffy bicycles that were made in the county to the north were now made in the country to the south. Buying American was in. To do so, we shopped at Walmart—an all-American red, white, and blue store with all-American products.

It wasn’t until college that I learned about the other aspects of globalization. Not only were Americans losing jobs to unpatriotic companies moving overseas, but the poor people who now had the jobs were also being exploited. Slouching at our desks in Sociology 201, we talked about sweatshops—dark, sweaty, abusive, dehumanizing, evil sweatshops. Nike was bad, and at some point, Walmart became un-American. I felt morally superior because I was wearing Asics. Thankfully, the fact that my apartment was furnished with a cheap, laminated entertainment center from Walmart wasn’t something I had to share with the class.

A degree in anthropology and a minor in geology left me eager to meet people of different cultural persuasions who lived far from the squared-off, flat fields of Ohio. While my classmates arranged job interviews, I booked plane tickets. I had seen the world in the pages of textbooks and been lectured about it long enough. It was time to see it for myself. The first trip was six months long, and the second and third trip each lasted two months. I worked as a SCUBA instructor in Key West, Florida, in between trips.

A love for travel came and never went. It wasn’t so much an itch as a crutch. I didn’t need much of an excuse to go anywhere.

And then one day while staring at a pile of clothes on the floor, I thought, “What if I traveled to all of the places where my clothes were made and met the people who made them?” The question wasn’t some great revelation I had while thinking about my fortunate position in the global marketplace; it was just another reason to leave, to put off committing to my relationship with Annie, the sophomore shooting guard turned growing-impatient girlfriend of 10 years. I traveled, quite simply, because I didn’t want to grow up.

I was stocking up on travel supplies—duct tape, tiny rolls of toilet paper, water purification tablets, and waders to protect against snakebites in the jungle—when I bumped into a classmate from high school working in the camping department of Walmart.

“So, I hear you’re a beach bum now,” he said, his years of service marked beneath a Walmart smiley face.

What can you say to that?

“Where you heading next?” he asked.

“Honduras,” I said.

“What’s in Honduras?” he asked. “More beaches?” I had fallen from the Best Dressed Guy to Beach Bum.

“No,” I said, “that’s where my T-shirt was made. I’m going to visit the factory where it was made and meet the people who made it.” Then I told him the entire list of my clothes and the other places I intended to visit.

“Oh, you’re going to visit sweatshops,” he said.

This was the response I received time and time again. When you tell a normal person with an everyday job, rent or a mortgage, and a car payment that you are spending thousands of dollars to go to a country because you want to go where your T-shirt was made, first they’ll think you’re crazy—and then they’ll probably say something about sweatshops.

I understood that the people who made my clothes were probably not living a life of luxury, but I didn’t automatically assume they worked in a sweatshop. In fact, I found this automatic assumption to be rather disturbing. The majority of people I talked to, and even members of a nationally syndicated program that reports on the world’s poor, assumed all of my clothes were made in sweatshops. It seemed to be a given: The people who make our clothes are paid and treated badly. Since few of us make our own clothes, buy secondhand, or are nudists, it appears that there is nothing we can do about it, we really don’t give a darn. Besides, we saved a few bucks.

In beach bum terms, my trip to Honduras was wildly successful, but in terms of my excuse for going to Honduras, it wasn’t. I went to the factory and met a worker, but I wasn’t comfortable learning about his life and chose to abandon the quest. I returned home, every bit the beach bum I was before the trip. I tried to forget about Honduras, the worker I met, and my pile of clothes and their MADE IN labels, but I couldn’t. A seed had been planted.

Events changed me. I got engaged to Annie, the growing-impatient girlfriend of 10 years turned fiancée. I bought a home. I started to become a normal American—a consumer with a mortgage, a refrigerator, and a flat-screen television. I began to settle into my American Dream, and comfortably so. However, the pile of clothes appeared once more, and I became obsessed once again with where my stuff was made.

I started to read books about globalization and the history of the garment industry, but I felt that they all missed something. I didn’t just want to know about the forces, processes, economics, and politics of globalization; I had to know about the producers who anchored the opposite end of the chain. The lives, personalities, hopes, and dreams of the people who make our clothes were lost among the statistics.

I decided to resume my quest to meet these people. To finance it, I did perhaps the most American thing I’ve ever done—I took out a second mortgage.

It’s probably obvious to you by now that I’m not Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist and author of best-selling globalization books such as The World Is Flat. I don’t have an intricate understanding of the world’s economy. No one met me at the airport when I arrived in the countries where my clothes were made. No company CEO was expecting me. I didn’t have an expense account. I had no contacts, no entourage, and no room reservations. However, I had plenty of mental ones.

I was simply a consumer on a quest. If you asked me what I was doing, I would have told you something about bridging the gap between producer and consumer. You probably would have thought I was a bit off, recklessly throwing time and money to the wind when I should have been at home paying off my mortgage and putting my college degree to work. And I don’t blame you.

But I did have priceless experiences that changed me and my view of the world. I went undercover as an underwear buyer in Bangladesh, was courted by Levi’s in Cambodia, and was demonized by an American brand’s VP in China.

I did my best to find the factories that made my clothes. If I wasn’t allowed in to see the factory, I waited outside for the workers. I took off my shoes and entered their tiny apartments. I ate bowls of rice cooked over gas stoves during power outages. I taught their children to play Frisbee, and rode a roller coaster with some of them in Bangladesh. I was challenged to a drinking game by a drunken uncle in China. I took a group of garment workers bowling in Cambodia. They didn’t like the game—which was just one of many things I discovered we had in common.

Along the way, I learned the garment industry is much more labor intensive than I ever thought. It is at the forefront of globalization in constant search of cheap, reliable labor to meet the industry’s tight margins. Activists tend to damn the industry, but it isn’t that simple. Some economists refer to it as a ladder helping people out of poverty, empowering women, but it isn’t that simple.

The reality of the workers’ lives is harsh.

It’s true the workers are glad to have jobs, even if they only receive $50 a month. And they don’t want you to boycott their products to protest their working conditions. (I asked.) But they would like to work less and get paid more.

Family is everything, but feeding that family is more important than actually being with them. And I saw things that made me think the unthinkable: that maybe, given certain circumstances and a lack of options, child labor isn’t always bad.

There is a long chain of players from producer to consumer. It is made up of workers, labor sharks, factories, subcontractors, unions, governments, buying houses, middle men, middle men for the middle men, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), importers, exporters, brands, department stores, and you and me. Each takes a cut. Some play by the rules; some don’t. Exploitation can occur on any level, except one—the workers aren’t in a position to exploit anyone.

• • •

James Bond fought communism. So did my grandpa’s underwear.

Following World War II, the US War and State Departments decided to rebuild the textile industry in Japan—because when you drop a pair of atomic bombs on a country, it’s a good idea to avoid helping them rebuild industries that could easily be converted to the production of weapons, since the people of that country are probably still a bit peeved.

It was important that the United States establish strong relations with Japan; if we didn’t, it was likely that the commies would. So we shipped them our cotton, and they shipped us our underwear. And that meant that Grandpa was able to buy his cheap.

Trade liberalization in Europe and Asia was seen as a way to win people over to democracy and prevent the spread of communism from China, Korea, and the Soviet Union. This was not an economic decision, but a political one.

In the aforementioned The World Is Flat (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2005), Thomas Friedman describes this thinking in present-day terms with his Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention:

I noticed that no two countries that both had McDonald’s had ever fought a war against each other since each got its McDonald’s . . . when a country reached the level of economic development where it has a middle class big enough to support a network of McDonald’s, it became a McDonald’s country. And the people of McDonald’s countries didn’t like to fight wars anymore. They preferred to wait in line for burgers . . . as countries got woven into the fabric of global trade and rising living standards, which having a network of McDonald’s franchises had come to symbolize, the cost of war for victor and vanquished became prohibitively high.

In other words, capitalism and garments spread peace and cheeseburgers around the world.

Eventually, though, economics took over. Developing nations wanted our business, and we wanted their cheap products. The garment industry within our own country was apt to go where labor was the cheapest and regulations the least, as evidenced by the flow from the North to the economically depressed South in the 1960s. So it is no surprise that as international trade became freer, and our own standards of living higher, the industry hopped our borders and sought out cheaper conditions abroad.

Despite protectionists’ efforts of fighting to keep the industry in the United States, a race to the bottom began. Sweatshop became a buzzword that fired up activists, caused consumers to hesitate, and made brands cringe.

• • •

Globalization affects us all. It forces change into our lives whether we are ready for it or not. Globalization is both good and bad. It’s a debate taking place in books, politics, boardrooms, at universities, and in shoppers’ minds. And it isn’t going away.

The Decent Working Conditions and Fair Competition Act was introduced in the Senate in 2007, backed by senators on both sides of the political aisle, including my home state senator, Sherrod Brown (D-OH). The bill, also known as the antisweatshop bill, proposed banning the import, export, and sale of sweatshop goods. Just as the bill’s predecessor introduced in the previous congressional session, it died in committee.

The debate rages on in Congress.

Most companies have developed codes of conduct for sourcing their products abroad. Some align themselves with monitoring agencies and labor rights groups. They struggle with what is right and what is profitable. But hardly any company wants its customers to think about where its products are made—because brand images are built on good times, sunny beaches, dancing, cold beer, and freedom, not factories, poverty, and separated families. Other companies don’t shy away from the realities of their production. Levi’s welcomed me as a concerned consumer. Patagonia has videos posted on its website of the factories from which they source and interviews with the workers who make their products.

The debate rages on in boardrooms.

Labor rights activists make companies accountable to their codes of conduct. If a brand isn’t meeting basic worker’s rights, they pressure the company to change. If they pressure too much, the company might cut and run, taking with them the jobs of the workers for which the activists were fighting. So how much do they ask for? How much do they push?

What are we as consumers to do? If we buy garments made in some developing country, we are contributing to an industry built on laborers whose wages and quality of life would be unacceptable to us. But if we don’t, the laborers might lose their jobs.

My conclusion, after visiting the people who made my favorite clothes, is that we should try to be engaged consumers, not mindless pocketbooks throwing dollars at the cheapest possible fashionable clothes we can find. Companies should give us some credit for being twenty-first–century humans. We can handle knowing where our clothes were made. We will buy from companies that make a real effort to be concerned about the lives of the workers who make their products. We need activists and labor organizations to work with the companies and to tell us which ones aren’t.

Walk into Target or Kohl’s or JCPenney or Macy’s, and you’ll find that some of the clothing was made by hardworking individuals who, in terms of the context of their country, were paid and treated fairly. They are supporting their families, trying to save up money to attend beauty school or to pay off a debt. Other products are made by workers who aren’t treated and paid fairly. After my quest, I want to know which is which (but preferably without having to dig through websites and lengthy reports). Money moves faster than ethics in the current global marketplace, and will probably continue to do so until companies, activists, and consumers advance the discussion by asking the money to slow down and explain where it’s been.

The people who make our clothes are poor. We are rich. It’s natural to feel guilty, but guilt or apathy or rejection of the system does nothing to help the workers.

Workers don’t need pity. They need rights, and they need to be educated about those rights. They need independent monitors checking the factories, ensuring the environment is safe and that they are treated properly. They need opportunities and choices. They need consumers concerned about all of the above. They need to be valued.

This book follows me from country to country, from factory to factory, from a life as a clueless buyer to that of an engaged consumer. Although it’s mind-boggling to compare the luxuries of our lives to the realities that the people who make our clothes face every day, on occasion I reflect on my own life—so that neither you nor I lose sight of how good we’ve got it.

In the past, I didn’t care about where my clothes were made or who made them. And then I met Amilcar, Arifa, Nari, Ai, Dewan, and Zhu Chun. Now I can’t help but care. And I’m certain that the more you know them, the more you’ll care too.

Please, allow me (Figure 1.1) to introduce you.

FIGURE 1.1 The author in front of the abandoned factory in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where his blue jeans were made.!

CHAPTER 2

Tattoo’s Tropical Paradise

July 2005

T-shirts are windows to our souls. They say who we are and what we believe, whom we support and whom we despise. A good one will make us laugh or think just a little. A bad one will draw our ridicule. More than any other item of clothing we own, our T-shirts deliver our message to the world.

The character Tattoo from the 1970s TV show Fantasy Island is on my favorite T-shirt. His eyes sparkle with mischief. His smile is too wide, his comb-over perfect. COME WITH ME TO MY hangs over his head, and TROPICAL PARADISE sits just beneath his dimpled chin.

My cousin Brice bought it for me when I lived in the tropical paradise of Key West. People who remember Fantasy Island and Tattoo’s catchphrase “De plane . . . De plane!” get a big kick out of my shirt. A bit of nostalgia, a dash of lighthearted humor; it’s a perfect T-shirt. Its tag reads, MADE IN HONDURAS.

Workers flood the narrow alley beside the Delta Apparel Factory in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, and rush to catch one of the many waiting buses at the highway. Merchants hoping to part them from a portion of their daily earnings—$4 to $5—fight for their attention. Vehicles push through the crowd. A minivan knocks over a girl in her mid-twenties and then runs over her foot. She curses, is helped to her feet, and limps onto a waiting bus.

The buildings behind the fence are shaded in Bahamian pastels and are very well kept. The shrubs have been recently shaped, and the grass has been trimmed. In the bright Honduran sun, they seem as pleasant as factories can be.

The lady at Georgia-based Delta Apparel giggled at me on the phone when I told her my plans. She was happy to tell me that their Honduran factory was located in the city of Villanueva just south of San Pedro Sula. She even wished me good luck.

Now that I’m in Honduras, the company doesn’t think it’s very funny.

I stand overwhelmed among the chaos. A thousand sets of eyes stare at me; perhaps they recognize my T-shirt. The irony that this is Tattoo’s tropical paradise wore off long ago—somewhere between the confrontation with the big-bellied guards at the factory gate who had guns shoved down their pants and the conversation with the tight-lipped company representative who refused to reveal much of anything about my T-shirt or the people who assembled it. I realized almost immediately that there was no way I was getting onto the factory floor. All I learned was that eight humans of indiscriminate age and sex stitched my shirt together in less than five minutes—not exactly information that required traveling all the way to Honduras to obtain.

Since arriving in Honduras, I’ve been SCUBA diving and jungle exploring, and have obtained enough writing fodder to support a couple months of travel columns and articles for the few newspapers and magazines to which I contribute, which would pay me a pittance of the expense I’ve incurred. I often write in my column, which covers years of traveling on a shoestring, about being a touron—one part eager tourist and one part well-meaning moron. I first heard this term when I was working as a SCUBA instructor in Key West. The locals used it to refer to the tourists who ride around on scooters honking their little scooter horns and asking jaded tour guides questions like: “Does the water go all the way ’round the island?” In Honduras, I’ve been nothing else—while ignoring the main reason I was here. I’m here to meet the people who made my shirt; but now that I’m surrounded by them, I’m feeling less “tourist” and more “moron.”

The workers break around me like salmon swimming around a rock with a bear on it. They steer clear from of me when I approach them. It’s almost as if they have been warned to stay away from the likes of me.

Finally, one hesitantly steps aside.

I find out that his name is Amilcar and that he lives in a nearby village with his parents. He attended school until seventh grade and likes to play soccer. His cheeks are skinny and his brow prominent. He has worked at the factory for less than a year.

“Ask him his age,” I tell my translator.

I know enough Spanish to make out that he’s 25 before my translator tells me.

Twenty-five. When I was 25, I was working part-time as a retail clerk in an outdoor store and part-time as a SCUBA instructor. Now, I’m 26, and I don’t have a job, unless you count the meager amount I make writing. My mom recently received a survey from my alma mater, Miami (of Ohio) University, that asked about my professional status. Because I was in Baja, Mexico, SCUBA diving at the time, she filled it out for me. When I received the results several months later, I found that I was the only person in my graduating class of thousands who was “unemployed by choice.”

As a college-educated, white male living in the United States, I have too many choices—and I can’t decide on any of them. I suppose this is how the quest started—a search for something, anything that would keep me from choosing a path just a little while longer.

The difference between Amilcar and me is that I have a choice. I can work for eight months and take off four months. I can settle down into a real job, but I choose not to. When I do opt to work, I do something fun. I’m mobile with no intention of planting roots.

One in four people are unemployed in Honduras. Jobs aren’t easy to come by. For his day of work, Amilcar probably made four to five times less than my cousin paid for my Tattoo T-shirt.

My translator asks if I have any more questions for Amilcar. I want to ask him how much money he actually makes. I want to see where he lives and what he eats, hear about what he hopes to become, and discover what he thinks about my life.

Part of me wants to know about Amilcar, but the other part is content not knowing—and maybe even a little scared about what I would learn. Do I really want to find out if the factory is a sweatshop?

This is my chance to prove myself, to show that the quest isn’t silly.

So I do something stupid. I give Amilcar the Tattoo T-shirt off my back. We pose for a few pictures before Amilcar rejoins the stream of workers flowing from the factory gates.

I’m a crazy shirtless gringo, a spoiled American. I’m a consumer, and my job is to buy stuff. Amilcar is a producer, and his job is to make stuff. Perhaps we are both better off not thinking too hard about the other’s life.

CHAPTER 3

Fake Blood, Sweat, and Tears

Anti-Sweatshop Protestors, April 2006

“Diet, Cherry, or Vanilla, Coca-Cola is a killa!” “Diet, Cherry, or Vanilla, Coca-Cola is a killa!”

I pretend to participate in the chant, but I find it ridiculous. Plus, Coca-Cola is my soft drink of choice.

I’m attending the first International SweatFree Communities conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with lots of angry young people who blame Coca-Cola for the deaths of union leaders in Colombia. According to one of the speakers, “If a company is big enough that we know their name, they probably have human rights violations.”

This is not the kind of place where you would want to walk in munching on a Big Mac and carrying a Walmart shopping bag. Most of the weekend-long conference is focused on the wrongdoings of the apparel industry. No major corporation is left unblemished.

In the middle of a session on labor abuses in Haiti, the participants break into a solidarity clap. It gradually increases in tempo and, at its height, a woman from Haiti yells, “We need to connect workers worldwide!”

The workshop session participants don’t take notes; they write manifestos in fancy leather-bound notebooks that tie or latch shut. Bright, young, organized people dedicated to changing their world are overrepresented, but so are people with green hair, Mohawks, and body piercings. One of them appears to have blood all over his shirt.

“What’s on your shirt?” I ask.

“Fake blood. I just came from a die-in.”

“What’s a die-in?”

“It’s where you pour fake blood all over yourself and lie on the ground and pretend to be dead.”

“Wasn’t it cold?” To me, April in Minnesota doesn’t seem like a good time to pour fake blood on yourself and lie on the ground.

“Not too bad,” he says. “We had tombstones blocking the wind.”

I don’t even ask what they were protesting.

It’s easy to dismiss SweatFree’s message as antiestablishment; after all, they probably disapprove of the truck I drive, the clothes I wear, and the food I eat. Plus, I’m not big on clapping and chanting in public; it seems a bit on the fringe. But for the past decade, this group has become our consumer conscience. With limited funds and a whole lot of passion, they’ve chased companies around the globe and made abominable working conditions public. If it weren’t for them, I would have never learned about labor rights in developing countries in Sociology 201. I wouldn’t have considered where my shirt was made or who made it.

Other than the die-ins in April in Minnesota, SweatFree’s strategies seem quite reasonable. First, they targeted large companies like Nike and GAP, which incited public awareness. Now they are concentrating on municipalities, public schools, and states, by arguing that taxpayers’ money is being used to purchase uniforms made under unacceptable conditions. The market in their crosshairs is big—billions of dollars—and unlike the retail market where consumers vote with their pocketbooks, citizens have actual votes. If a bunch of voters complain that mistreated Mexican workers are making your uniforms, you listen—or risk not being reelected.

By this point, 9 states, 40 cities, 15 counties, and 118 school districts have adapted SweatFree procurement policies, and more than 180 colleges and universities have adopted similar rules. Students might not care about how big of a mess they leave for the janitor in their dorm’s corridors, but they care about where and under what conditions that janitor’s uniform was made. Concerned tax and tuition payers are being heard.

Since I left Honduras, Amilcar’s face haunts me each time I pull on a T-shirt. I’ve become obsessed with tags. If an item of clothing was made somewhere I don’t recognize, I pull out the atlas and find it. I know that each tag must have a story behind it—of faces, places, hands, families, struggles, and dreams. I want to know more workers like Amilcar around the world. That’s why I’m attending this conference.

Most of the attendees have never met the workers to whom they dedicate so much of their fake blood, sweat, and tears. So naturally, they are eager to ask me questions when I tell them that I’ve been to a factory in Honduras.

The problem is that I don’t have any answers. My quest to Honduras was a failure.

The conference leaves me with more questions, which I realize won’t get answered unless I find them on my own.

If I knew what these people knew, would I be angry like them? Do Honduran or Haitian workers even want a 20-year-old philosophy major in Minnesota participating in die-ins in their name? Maybe they’re glad to have a job—despite one that pays a shockingly low wage by US standards—because it’s enough for them and their families to get by.

The conference and my engagement give new urgency to my quest. I have questions that need to be answered before I can settle down into an all-American life. While Annie begins planning our wedding and settling into the home we buy in Muncie, Indiana, I pack my bags. As Annie begins her quest to find the perfect wedding dress, I set out to find the people who made my underwear.

PART II

My Underwear: Made in Bangladesh

CHAPTER 4

Jingle These

April 2007

“So, I hear you are interested in women’s panties.” Salehin, a middleman in the Bangladeshi garment industry, magically whips out a pair of sea-foam green granny panties and splashes them down across the desk between us. They’re see-through.

I’ve just taken a swig from a skinny can of Coca-Cola and fight hard not to spit it all over Salehin and his granny panties. Composure is required when you’re undercover as an underwear buyer.

“No . . . I’m interested in boxers,” I pull my boxers out of my Domke camera bag, “like these.”

I bullshit my way through a discussion about my underwear: how they were printed, what their thread count is. The sad thing is that I don’t know squat about any of this—and Salehin still salivates at the thought of doing business with an American buyer.

I experience a mix of emotions: nervousness (that I’ll be caught in my fib); exhilaration (because he’s actually buying the fib); and guilt (again, because he’s actually buying the fib.)

I describe to Salehin how I want my boxers designed.

“We can make those,” Salehin says. “We can make anything.”

He smiles at me—a glowing sack of American greenbacks.

“Now,” Salehin says, “tell me more about your business.”

I never intended to pass myself off as a garment buyer. It just kind of happened. Really, Dalton is to blame. But first, here is all you need to know about my favorite underwear.

• • •

My underwear aren’t sexy. They’re an inside joke with myself.

I didn’t get my first pair of new underwear until I was five. I was a younger brother, and younger brothers wear hand-me-downs—even underwear. I never had a pair I could call my own until Mom decided that I deserved a pair of Scooby-Doo Underoos for being good while she shopped in The Boston Store, a small family clothing store where the store clerks knew how to measure and make adjustments. The Boston Store has since gone out of business along with the other department stores in Union City, Ohio—including Kirshbaum’s, Kaufman’s, and McClurg’s Five and Dime. They went under in the mid-1980s when all of the local factories started to close or leave the country. Westinghouse moved to Mexico; Sheller Globe downsized their production of plastic moldings for vehicles under the pressure of foreign competition; and the Body Company, which made chasses for step vans, was bought and lost the majority of their work to cheaper labor in the South.

Globalization came to Union City, a small town that straddles the Ohio and Indiana border. It took jobs. It took stores. Today, I’m not sure if it’s even possible to purchase a pair of underwear anywhere in town. You might be able to at Rite Aid, but they likely wouldn’t be comfortable or funny.

Unfortunately, I can’t show my favorite pair of boxers in public. Not only would it be in poor taste; it would be illegal. So I wear them to meetings, classes, funerals, weddings—places where no one ever gets to enjoy them. And I’m pretty sure that most people would like them. They have multicolored Christmas ornaments printed on them and the phrase Jingle These running around the waistband.

I got them as a gift years ago and, ever since, they’ve maintained a regular place in my underwear rotation regardless of the time of year or holiday season.

If you look closely, you can still read the faded tag. It reads, MADE IN BANGLADESH. And though a country whose population is 83 percent Muslim couldn’t give a hoot about Christmas, I’m about to learn that they get pretty excited about my underwear.

• • •

Bangladesh is surrounded by India to the west, north, and east, with the Bay of Bengal to the south. The country, slightly smaller than Iowa, is bursting at the seams with people. However, while Iowa’s population is 3 million, Bangladesh counts 135 million, making it the most densely populated country in the world. And getting around the capital Dhaka isn’t easy.

Dhaka’s streets are drab and dusty, with rickshaws and colorful artwork providing a relief to the eye. Their tinkling bells, which cut through the motorized chaos, are a treat to the ear and, if you’re viewing Dhaka from one of its taller buildings, are the most prominent sound drifting to the rooftops. The Dhaka police estimate that there are 600,000 rickshaws operating in the city (Figure 4.1).

FIGURE 4.1 A traffic jam of rickshaws in Dhaka.

The rickshaw is an old technology, and cell phones are a new one. Today, 29 million Bangladeshis have cell phones. There are many stores and service centers in Dhaka, but there’s only one Motorola store, which I had a heck of a time finding.

I had been trying to find someone who would know how to unlock my phone, and having visited several stores with no luck while braving multiple street crossings and taxis, I got the advice that shaped my stay in Bangladesh, “Go see Mr. Dalton with Motorola in Banani.”

So I took a rickshaw to see Mr. Dalton. It was my first, and I was somewhat concerned about the attention I might draw—because it turned out that I was basically a rock star in Bangladesh.

I’ve never worn leather pants or trashed a hotel room. My rock stardom is purely a function of the rareness of being a blond-haired, blue-eyed foreigner. Heads turn when I walk down the street, and crowds form when I stop. A riot nearly broke out when I attended a Bangladeshi rock concert (featuring the legendary guitar licks of Ayub Bachchu) and was sucked into a Bangladeshi mosh pit. If you haven’t seen one, there’s a lot of hand-holding, gyrating, hugging, basically everything that you would do at a rock concert in the United States—if you wanted to get your ass kicked real fast. People get sucked into these things and are never heard from again.

Luckily, the ride to the Motorola store was devoid of mosh pits.

• • •

Dalton, the general manager of the Motorola store, has a look in his eyes as if he’s always up to something or knows something you don’t. It’s kind of a squint out the side. His blue-black hair is combed over to the right, and he regularly flips his head back and smoothes it into place with his hand.

“Where is your country?” Dalton asked. “Why you come to Bangladesh?”

I told him. His eyes sparkled with excitement.

“I’m a journalist, too,” he said.

When it was all said and done, Dalton had my phone reprogrammed and gave me a SIM card to use for free. But we hardly talked about phones that first afternoon. Instead, Dalton showed me his portfolio of published stories, his book of poetry, and photographs.

“This is life in Bangladesh.” Dalton held up a photo of two street boys sleeping on the sidewalk with their heads resting on a scrawny dog. The picture surprised me. It wasn’t the sight of the boys on the street that was unexpected. A short walk anywhere in Dhaka will yield such a sight. What surprised me about Dalton’s photo is that Dalton actually sees this. Most people in Bangladesh don’t bat an eye at street children sleeping in the midafternoon sun. Dalton sees and captures such sights.

Dalton is different—which made us instant friends.

After Dalton showed me nearly every picture he had ever taken, we returned to the topic of my quest in Bangladesh and how I should go about meeting the people who made my underwear and locating the factory where they were produced.

“You no need to think,” Dalton said. “I take care of everything.”

I came to Bangladesh alone on my quest. Now I had a partner.

• • •

Dalton has a tendency to introduce me as someone much more important than I am. In his boyhood village of Ludhua, I was the honored journalist.

The village elders assembled at a tea stand alongside the main thoroughfare, not much wider than a golf-cart path. They wanted to talk politics with the honored journalist. What did I think of George W. Bush? They didn’t like him.

They told me that Bush was manipulating the Bangladeshi government to do his bidding because oil had recently been discovered. He was responsible for something bad in their country. I never learned what. Was it the regular flooding, getting worse by the year thanks to rising sea levels that wipe out crops and leave a wake of hunger? Was it the fact that Bangladesh has no government at this particular time? The incumbent party had fixed the last election, but the military took control of the government to try to end the corruption before the election could take place. There were so many problems it was impossible to fathom which ones they were pinning on Bush.

I doubt that Bush or anyone in his administration rolled out of bed in the morning and thought much about Bangladesh. Maybe this is part of the problem. But the village elders—men who have likely never seen a computer, who live a day’s trip from Dhaka via boat trips on which before you board you are repeatedly asked if you can swim, or bus rides that seem even sketchier than the boats—blame the president of the United States for their situation.

The village chairman met with the honored journalist in his office. He sent one of his boys for soda pop and cookies. He apologized for not having more time to talk, but he was very busy. Bags of rice were stacked in the corner, which had been donated from a foreign organization, and he had the difficult job of deciding who in his village needed them most.

I was meeting with the chairman to learn about his village’s role in the textile industry, since many of the garment workers in Dhaka come from villages like his. Dalton wanted to introduce me to village life and thought there was no better way than to have me play a game of Kabaddi. When he told the chairman about his plans, the chairman laughed. Kabaddi was the perfect way to break the ice with the villagers. I just hoped I wouldn’t be breaking anything else.

A good portion of the village assembled to see the honored journalist play Kabaddi. It was rare to see a foreigner, but a foreigner playing Kabaddi . . . that was unheard of.

Kabaddi is a sort of full-contact tag meets ultraviolent Red Rover in which whoever is IT must chant repeatedly “Kabaddi . . . Kabaddi . . . Kabaddi. . . .” in one breath while trying to tag someone on the opposite side and make it back across half-court. Once tagged, the opposing team tries to tackle him.

I stood on one baseline with five of my teammates. Twenty feet in front of us was half-court and another 20 feet was the other baseline with our opponents. The court is carved into the dirt, the field worn with use. It was the largest open space in the village that wasn’t a rice paddy.

Dalton gave out instructions that I gathered included: Don’t hurt the honored journalist. I was the biggest and oldest of the bunch. The other players were knots of stringy muscle and showing ribs. I recognized one as the rickshaw driver who had pedaled us around the village earlier in the day.

On the first play, my teammates wrapped the opposing player low, and I tackled him high. The village watched, cheering loudly. Then it was my turn to be IT. The five opposing players immediately stopped my progress, and I forgot to keep repeating “Kabaddi” because I was laughing too hard.