Sunsara Taylor speaking tour organizers call for protest at American Apparel, Sat. Feb. 23 in NYC

Organizers in NYC for "From the Burkha to the Thong: Everything Must, and Can Change—We Need Total Revolution,” Sunsara Taylor’s nationwide campus speaking tour, are calling for protest against American Apparel's “Search for Best Bottom in the World” contest.  Time & place:  Sat., Feb. 20, 2 pm at American Apparel store, 712 Broadway in NYC.

American Apparel is promoting the degradation of women everywhere by running this contest. This is intolerable.

Alice Woodward, one of the tour organizers, said, “This is reducing women to disembodied bottoms. Spin the globe. Everywhere you look in the world women are held down and slammed backwards. This contest is an outrage and is one more reason why everyone who thinks that women should be treated as whole human beings need to come to NYU’s Cantor Film Center at 36 East 8th Street on Tuesday, February 23 from 7-9:30 pm to hear Sunsara Taylor.”

On their website, American Apparel describes the contest this way: “Confident about the junk in your trunk? Show us your assets! Post a photo of your booty's best side for judgment. We're looking for a brand new bum (the best in the world!) to be the new ‘face’ for our always expanding intimates and briefs lines…”

This demands a response.

In the US we are told that women are no longer oppressed. Yet, how many will learn to starve themselves, cut themselves, hate themselves, internalizing the images that saturate society of women as objects of sexual conquest, the butt of a joke, or baby-making machines?

Looks like protestors will also perform street theater featuring an exchange between a woman dressed in a burkha and another dressed in a thong, and ending with an announcement about the Feb. 23 event at NYU. In building for the 23rd, the street theater has been performed in student cafeterias, on street corners and in the subway to both applause and debate. This photo is from Union Square, NY.

Aside from NYU, Sunsara will be appearing at campuses across the country, including University of Chicago on March 3, in Berkeley on March 15, at UCLA on April 8 and more to be announced.