What is Labor Trafficking: Part One Forced Labor & The Fashion Industry

By Ashlie Bailey

The fashion industry is responsible for fueling both the labor trafficking industry and also the sex trafficking industry and is guilty of promoting and perpetrating both. Over the years the fashion industry has begun inventing and promoting revealing sexy clothing on tiny models who are getting younger and younger. It has become more popular than ever for retail stores to sell sexy looking clothing for teens and children. Not only that but many of the young women who have joined or have a desire to join the modeling industry ultimately end up having their bodies exploited.

Young women are asked to pose in sexually provocative poses in barely any clothing for secular magazines. These are the norms of the fashion industry but is it really healthy to normalize the objectification of the young female body. It isn’t when these kinds of experiences become a gateway to the door into a future career in pornography and the commercial sex industry. Young males who view the photos come to expect their peers of the opposite sex to look like the women in the photos. Young females who look at the magazines desire to be like the women in the photos and many of them will resort to drastic and unhealthy measures to obtain a certain appearance. Obtaining that sexy appearance puts girls at a greater risk of being objectified or exploited; which fuels the cycle of the sex industry.

Another way that the fashion industry fuels the human trafficking industry is through modeling and modeling agencies. At best the legitimate modeling agencies only fuel the demand to objectify the woman's body. The other scenario is when a modeling agency coerces a young woman entering the modeling world into gradually moving from softer core photo shoots to posing nude or nearly nude but they don’t know its pornography because the fashion industry tells them it is art.

One of the worst case scenarios is when a corrupt or illegitimate modeling agency introduces an underage girl into performing in pornography. The very worst case scenario is when the agency either introduces the model to a trafficker or when the entire agency is run by a trafficker who is posing as a modeling agent or photographer. This is a combination of both labor trafficking and sex trafficking. The very worst case scenario is far more common than the public is aware of. There is an entire website that exists solely for the purpose of connecting hundreds of aspiring models under the age of eighteen to modeling agents and photographers who haven't been through any kind of screening process or even had a background check. It should come as no surprise then that the site is notorious for traffickers using it to meet young girls.

Read the rest of this article continued on the next post Fashion Industry Part Two>