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It’s taken me ages to finally post about this. But I’ve been feeling compelled to share my “evolved” feelings toward American Apparel — and they’re not so good anymore.

Yes, I’ve posted about the company a fair amount here, and yes, I own a fair amount of the brand’s pieces. But no longer can I defend Dov Charney and the brand’s antics to my naysaying friends, defending the company for its fair labor policies, because my naysaying friends all make very good points. The brand has gone too far too many times. Like these two antics that pushed me over the edge:

1. The soft porn

This illustration from lunchbreath at Core77 almost says it all, but if you needed any more convincing, how about an innocent Google image search of “american apparel”? Feel free to take my word for it, but its results show about as many crotches and boobs as tees. (Oh, and Woody Allen.)

I will say, I think American Apparel has done a fantastic job with their brand positioning, bringing their basic garments into a much higher echelon of both real and perceived taste than a single one of their competitors. But please, leave a little more to a 12-year-old boy’s imagination.

2. Retail store hiring policies

Here’s the real kicker. Earlier this summer when AA retail sales weren’t so hot, an anonymous tipster reported that Charney took it out on his not-so-hot salespeople:

One week, he went on a huge tirade and made stores that weren’t doing well send in group photos. Why, you ask? He made store managers across the country take group photos of their employees so that he could personally judge people based on looks. He is tightening the AA ‘aesthetic,’ and anyone that he deems not good-looking enough to work there, is encouraged to be fired. … Dov personally judged each person … The comments that he made were raging from childish ones to insulting ones.

(Dov denied that claim, but who do you believe?) And that’s when you already worked there. To apply in the first place, online applications include uploading three images of yourself (“To show us your personal style and how you present yourself,” the application reads) that are reportedly reviewed by corporate before store managers even get their hands on them. If that’s not considered discrimination based on looks, I don’t know what is.

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I can’t say that I’m going to stop buying American Apparel altogether. (I spend half of my week in the T-shirt printing business, and American Apparel is the Cadillac of tees, a position they’ve earned on quality alone. I can’t take this bias out on apparel company owners, who stand to profit much more than AA when one of their custom-printed shirts is purchased.)

But when it comes to making purchases from brands and businesses that are as respectful as possible to the world around them, this simply doesn’t cut it. Which means I’ll be rethinking all future purchases directly from the American Apparel name.