Part of the Series
Ladydrawers
Last month in “Our Fashion Year,” we tracked garment production all the way to an anti-human trafficking NGO in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. This strip takes place in the same NGO – which Anne Elizabeth Moore visited in January – one of the expanding field of organizations that offers sex workers alternative employment opportunities. Yet when viewed economically, these “alternatives” just don’t compare.
It’s only the latest in our year-long investigation into gender, labor and cultural production. (You can read our previous three years of strips here.) We’ve so far followed the threads of the international garment trade from your local fast fashion emporium all the way back to their source, in the factories of developing countries, in “Fast Fashion,” “Let’s Go Shopping” and “The Business of Thrift” (with Julia Gfrörer); and “Zoned,” “Red Tape” and “Outta Sight (Out of Mind)” (with Melissa Mendes). Ellen Lindner’s “It’s the Money, Honey” and “Out of the Factories Part 1” (also with Melissa Gira Grant) brought us from the garment trade into the sex trade abroad. Next month, with a new top-secret artist, we’ll start looking at who’s funding anti-trafficking NGOs – and why.

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