We have gained a ton of respect for young model Coco Rocha for writing this insightful, articulate essay on just how ridiculous it is that at size 4, she’s been accused of being too fat for the runway in respected publications like The New York Times and the New York Daily News.

Let’s let Ms. Rocha have the floor:

I’m a 21 year old model, 6 inches taller and 10 sizes smaller than the average American woman. Yet in another parallel universe I’m considered “fat”… This was the subject of major discussion this week and the story that was spun was: “Coco Rocha is too fat for the runway”.

Is that the case? No. I am still used and in demand as a model. In fact I find myself busier than ever. In the past few years I have not gained an extreme amount of weight, only an inch here and there as any young woman coming out of her teenage years would.

But this issue of model’s weight is, and always has been, of concern to me. There are certain moral decisions which seem like no brainers to us. For example, not employing children in sweatshops, and not increasing the addictiveness of cigarettes. When designers, stylists or agents push children to take measures that lead to anorexia or other health problems in order to remain in the business, they are asking the public to ignore their moral conscience in favor of the art.

Surely, we all see how morally wrong it is for an adult to convince an already thin 15 year old that she is actually too fat. It is unforgivable that an adult should demand that the girl unnaturally lose the weight vital to keep her body functioning properly. How can any person justify an aesthetic that reduces a woman or child to an emaciated skeleton? Is it art? Surely fashion’s aesthetic should enhance and beautify the human form, not destroy it.

We are in awe of Ms. Rocha’s poise and grace in responding to such heartless and baseless criticism, and we hope others listen to what she’s saying.

In the spirit of our February commenting contest, we want to draw attention to one of the many thoughtful messages we have received from E.S. readers over the past year and a half. (Yes, this week marks our 1.5 year anniversary!)

This one comes from Roe at YesHoneyChyle.com in response to our post about Aeropostale’s denim drive for Haiti:

Do you think Aeropostale is really doing something ethical or that they might be “charity-washing” themselves to gain more buyers and creating marketing ties in a country they didn’t have before (Haiti)? And if Aeropostale uses cheap sweat-shop labor to make their products and ships that product to a country without jeans, is it still considered benevolence?

It’s a great question.

In 2002, Abercrombie & Fitch, Aeropostale’s parent corporation, admitted it used sweatshop labor in its manufacturing and settled in a landmark $22-million class action lawsuit on behalf of factory workers in Saipan. Since then, allegations of unethical labor policies have quieted down, but it’s worth noting that Abercrombie’s history (and, by extension, Aeropostale’s) isn’t so squeaky clean.

We can certainly see the contradiction in a company sending relief supplies to one impoverished country while employing cheap labor in another. How about you? Do you think Aeropostale is sincere in its campaign to help Haitians?

Last week, Los Angeles-based American Apparel laid off 1,500 factory workers who were unable to prove that they were in the country legally.

A federal investigation uncovered roughly 1,800 employees who were illegal immigrants or had other problems with their employment record, and while the company officially says it is “very disappointed and disheartened” at having to make this decision, it was in American Apparel’s best interest to dismiss them — at least until the immigrants can apply for legal working status.

The situation is heartbreaking all around and it calls to mind the Emmy-winning 2007 documentary Made in L.A., which follows the plight of the Los Angeles Garment Workers Center.

Airing on PBS (in collaboration with Latino Public Broadcasting), the documentary focuses on three garment workers employed at Forever 21, and what they had to endure so that shoppers around the world can buy low-priced clothing.

Lupe Hernandez has 15 years of experience working in Los Angeles garment factories, having left Mexico City at age 17 for a better life in America. Maura Colorado had to make the heart-wrenching decision to leave her three children behind with family in El Salvador so she could come to Los Angeles to support them, but without legal status, she has been unable to return home to visit them. María Pineda emigrated with her husband from Mexico when she was 18, and after 23 years of domestic abuse and earning next to nothing at a hard job, she questions her self-worth. 

These women and countless others just like them decided to take a stand for self-empowerment in 2001 through the Los Angeles Garment Worker Center. The advocacy group is run primarily by children of Asian immigrants, but despite language and culture barriers, they worked together to fight for their rights.

The story pits David against Goliath as the Garment Worker Center takes on Forever 21, the fast fashion brand that ran the factories where the three women work. Despite being an American company, Forever 21 uses a sweatshop business model. Workers at the Los Angeles garment factories work 10- to 14-hour days without breaks for meals or the use of the restroom, in poorly ventilated facilities for far less than what their American-born counterparts are paid. Typical wages are far below the state minimum, and frequently go unpaid or missing overtime.

To fight these and other abuses, the workers led a boycott against Forever 21 and issued a public challenge to shed some light on the apparel company’s reliance on low-wage labor right here on American soil.

The film chronicles the long campaign to bring a huge company to justice. Watch as the garment workers sue for unpaid wages and overtime owed by the company’s contractors and organize rallies outside stores and even the home of Forever 21’s CEO, Do Won Chang. 

Made in L.A. sends a powerful message about economic injustices that aren’t merely a problem in poor and developing countries.

To view the documentary, you can order it from Newsreel.org or check local listings for a repeat airing on PBS.

Bangladesh is home to 4,200 garment factories, but those companies are now taking steps to shed the “sweatshop” label, the AFP reports.

Consultants like Rodney Reed, a British businessman who has been living in Bangladesh for three years, are helping the factories become socially responsible and treat garment workers well:

With signs that the runaway growth in the garment trade is beginning to slow because of the global financial crisis, Reed said Bangladesh could set itself apart from other garment-producing countries by becoming a fair-trade hub.

“In the same way we see organic coffee and organic vegetables in the UK, people pay more money for products if they are environmentally sustainable,” Reed said, adding that fair trade could become vital to the country’s survival as a leading garment producing nation.

“At the moment Bangladesh’s only advantage is its cheap labour, but that may not always be the case. Someplace else will come along offering cheaper labour, most likely sub-Saharan African countries, and shops will send their orders there instead,” he said.

Read more about the pros and cons of overseas sweatshop labor here.

Activism to stop sweatshop labor, on the surface, seems like it would be uncontroversial. Who in their right mind would argue in favor of allowing exploited people to work grueling 18-hour days for insultingly low pay?

As it turns out, factory jobs are a hot commodity in some parts of the world. And more and more sweatshop workers are speaking out to say “please don’t take away my job.”

Nicolas D. Kristof, the columnist for The New York Times, wrote a controversial op-ed in January regarding poor families in Cambodia who, in order to survive, degrade themselves to picking through garbage dumps for valuables. Allowing sweatshops to operate, Mr. Kristof writes, would at least get these families out of the trash heap and into relatively cushy factory conditions.

Granted, cushy is all relative. What serves for a covetable job and decent pay in Vietnam would be unacceptable for most Westerners — the predominant reason that manufacturing jobs have moved overseas.

But Mr. Kristof would find an ally in Leslie T. Chang, author of Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China.

For her book, Ms. Chang spent three years interviewing female factory workers who, in many cases, left home at age 16 or 17 to try to make a better life in one of China’s big cities.

“A young woman’s prospects completely change after she moves to the city,” she writes. “She can earn and save cash for the first time, and with some initiative and luck, she can move up into a better job. Almost all of the midlevel executives, clerks, and salespeople I met started out as assembly-line workers. The view from the outside is that these women are victims, but they have big plans, schemes, and goals. They see themselves as actors in their own dramas.”

It’s a side heard less commonly than those who work to end sweatshop abuses. Their voices are the dominant ones.

Kalpona Akter is a 33-year-old former garment worker, now turned activist. In a profile on NewsBlaze.com, she describes how she began working in a Bangladeshi factory at the age of 12, soon logging 17-hour work days in unsafe conditions for only $8 per month — a sad sum even in her native land.

She now works on behalf of the 85 percent of Bangladesh’s 2.2 million garment workers who are women between 18 and 25 years of age — meaning they tend to be uneducated and easily exploited. They go without health care, vacation, and maternity leave. Ms. Akter says Bangladeshi sweatshop employees are among the lowest-paid workers in the entire world.

It’s hard to argue that anyone would ask to be treated poorly or denied even the most basic benefits. And indeed, if a compromise between the two sides is possible, it seems that working toward ending abuses is a worthy goal.

But if it’s what the people want, who are we to say they shouldn’t have the opportunity to make a better life for themselves?

Alexandra Sinderbrand, a columnist for HuffingtonPost.com, threw down the gauntlet in her article this week: The fashion industry is hypocritical for opposing sweatshop-made knockoffs of the bestselling bags and shoes.

The big names behind the Fakes Are Never In Fashion campaign, she writes, are the same brands that couldn’t take the heat in 2002 for contracting workers in India and the Philippines for less than $3.25 a day — sometimes as little as 10 cents per hour. Once the abuses were exposed, PPR, the parent company, closed down the factories rather than try to rectify the wrongs.

As Ms. Sinderbrand compellingly writes:

Prada, Gucci. Yves Saint Laurent, Alexander McQueen, Balenciaga, Stella McCartney, Bottega Veneta. All high-end heavyweights frequently ripped off by the counterfeit industry; all entities poised to benefit from the mockery of a cause that is Fashion’s Fight Against Fakes; all labels happy to expose and condemn their counterfeit competition for crimes that they, in all their brandtastic glory, too have committed. Hypocrisy must be the next big thing.

The recession moratorium on sequins is over at last! Apparently. Lisa Armstrong thinks so at the London Times, at least:

“Dust them off, bring them down, lighten up.”

It’s good advice.

We would add one thing: If you’re in the market for new sequins, think twice about the new and cheap. For starters, you be leaving shiny bits all over town (fun for a minute but quickly gets out of hand).

More seriously, though, sequined garments are very labor-intensive. If it’s an unbelievable bargain, someone has probably already paid at some point in the process.

We logged some time on a few vintage sites this afternoon and found their sequin selections noticeably inferior to Etsy. The dress above with amazing plunging neckline is $135.  But we can’t help but draw your attention to these 1980s French style heels too if you are a size 7 1/2. Show stoppers!

Now that the Lakers have won the NBA Championship, a student-organized group has started petitioning the NBA top brass to stop buying their uniforms from the Russell Corporation, a conglomerate protestors say uses sweatshop labor.

The NBA has a $125-million deal with Russell Corporation, making it the company’s biggest deal. So naturally, they are fighting back against Students Against Sweatshops’s claims of unethical treatment of its workers.

However, the evidence is hard to refute. The Workers Rights Consortium has been tracking Russell’s involvement in the mistreatment of 1,800 workers at a factory in Honduras.

Russell Corporation also manufactures collegiate apparel for a number of universities. In response to Students Against Sweatshops activism, the University of Florida recently terminated its contract with the company.

Interested in joining the cause? Sign an online petition here.

NewsBlaze.com has a compelling profile of Kalpona Akter, a 33-year-old former garment worker from Bangladesh who now fights sweatshop labor abuses as the head of the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity.

In Ms. Akter’s new role as an activist, she describes how she began working in a factory at age 12, logging 17-hour work days in unsafe conditions for a paltry $8 per month. She also speaks of how 85 percent of Bangladesh’s 2.2 million garment workers are women between 18 and 25 years of age, so preferred because they tend to be uneducated and easily exploited. With no health care, vacation, or maternity leave, they are among the lowest-paid workers in the entire world.

If sweatshop labor is a pet cause of yours, Ms. Akter’s first-hand account is a recommended read.

We’ve touched on some of the issues facing NYC Garment Center here, but as 39th and Broadway points out today the situation isn’t any better at the Garment Center in Los Angeles. One of the leading efforts to raise awareness about the latter is a documentary called Made in L.A.

The film follows the experiences of three Latina immigrants as they try to win labor protections from fast fashion retailer Forever 21. Though the doc has been a big success, (it won an Emmy in 2008), there is still plenty of work to do on the workers’ rights front. So as a way to get the word out, the filmmakers have announced a May Day Community Screening Campaign.

Click here to find out how you can help by hosting a screening or simply spreading the word.