I'm leaving for New York this week. That means I need shirts that don't say "Eugene Weekly" or "Capitalists Do It Ruthlessly." And I need shoes that aren't basically for working out.

Read some personal agonizing after the jump.

Last weekend, I interviewed John Bowe, on whom I now have a total journalist crush. Bowe wrote Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the Global Economy. (Here's the interview.)

Part of the book is about the essential slavery of garment workers on Saipan, which is part of the Northern Marianas Islands (near Guam, and for X's sake, don't ask where that is; I've been there, and it involves a lot lot lot of flying over a lot lot lot of Pacific Ocean).

I knew some about the garment worker issues just from general liberal media info gathering (I'm kind of a media junkie, as my Newsroll [discontinued until I have some free time again] might have shown you). And since a protectionist trade agreement expired at the end of 2006, the garment factories aren't on Saipan anymore anyway. BUT...like any other clothing companies would be better?

And yet. I really, really did not want to go to this NEA Fellowship in Classical Music and Opera, in which we go to a ton o' concerts and two opera performances, with the ancient clothing I have. Now again, don't get me wrong; I hardly ever shop, and when I lived in Iowa City (the last time I had money for clothes), I enjoyed doing what a long-time-ago friend called "living on the fringes of the patriarchy" and getting my clothes at thrift and secondhand stores. But Buffalo Exchange doesn't cut it for me (apparently people my size don't exist in their tiny, insular world), and the Goodwills in Eugene...they have not given me what I want. (Though I did pick up a sweet gray sweater and a nice black coat at Value Village last January; both of those are coming with me to NY.)

So. Today I bought clothing made in Indonesia, China, Guatemala and Vietnam. I'm pretty sure I exploited a lot of poor women of color who are underpaid and possibly held in slavery conditions for the jeans, pants, sweater, skirt, 2 tops and shoes. Fuck.

I'm pretty sure that if I'd thought about this a few months ago when I got the fellowship, I could have put the word out among friends, and eventually someone my size would have loaned me clothes for the trip. Instead, I waited until the very last minute (bar shopping in NY, which, ennnnh, big ol' sales tax).

Argh. Oh, and no, American Apparel isn't going to cut it either. What with the union-busting, sizism, fucked-up advertisements (which, yes, appear in my paper) and the total asshole who started the company, it's not my kind of place.

At least my goddamn tights and socks come from Maggie's. Which better not employ slave labor (the company claims fair trade and social responsibility).

And I do have shoes (that I can't wear too much thanks to some foot issues) from No Sweat Apparel. Yeah, but I fucked up today.

Damn.