“Dressed Like a Stripper”: Visualizing Poverty in Ethical Fashion

In the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election, many observed how Donald Trump relied on rhetoric concerning labor and globalization, galvanizing a (supposed) working class, and specifically targeting racialized immigrants. As this article outlines, these phenomena—anti-immigrant and xenophobic discourse on the one hand, classist framings of the US working class on the other—often collude in discussions of globalization. In this article, I explore the constellation of these cultural forces through an examination of US anti-sweatshop discourse, which has long served public opinion on issues regarding globalization, most notably the politics of transnational labor. Examining advertisements from the sweatshop-free retailer American Apparel and images from the blog People of Walmart, I interrogate how the convention of framing sweatshops as a problem “solved” through ethical consumerism informs representations of the racialized poor in the United States. I argue that the moral underpinnings of ethical consumerism animate popular representations of the racialized poor. In conclusion, by examining the racialized class politics undergirding ethical consumerist movements, I seek to unsettle the class assumptions guiding them.