"Do a dance on Audrey Hepburn's grave," Audrey unleashes the altruistic side of Gap

This first article is yet another diatribe against the Gap ads, but I couldn't help but laugh at the first line: "Well, do a dance on Audrey Hepburn's grave." It's a good article, though, and worth the read. I somewhat agree with fans who say, "Well, at least it's introducing Audrey to a new generation of people," but when you read a couple of the stories in the article, you just have to wonder why exactly some people are interested in Audrey anyway. It also furthers the belief that she was only good for modeling clothes and encouraging girls to be thin (see rant below), and that the only movie of hers worth seeing (or even talking about) is Breakfast at Tiffany's. The whole article can be found here.

The next article talks about the Gap's next course of action, now that the month of Audrey has come and gone. Maybe paying the Children's Fund to use Audrey's image for the commercials opened their eyes to a new side of advertising, or maybe it was just the celebrity attention towards Darfur and Africa in general, but this month Gap's schtick is to unveil Gap Red. Gap Red is a separate line of clothes that are either all red or feature the colour and have inspirational messages. Half of the proceeds from the sales of this line go to the Global Fund, helping women and children infected with AIDS living in Africa. Now the AIDS epidemic is extremely bad in Africa, still spiraling out of control. I'll refrain from going into it too much here because it's a complex situation, but needless to say, it feels sort of strange coming from Gap. I told my second in command (who mainly runs the MySpace page and upcoming podcasts, when not distracting me from my share of the work), and he said "That's odd. Why don't they just stop using sweatshops to make their clothes?" I'm not going to knock a charity, as long as it's legitimately doing its business and is not an excuse to funnel funds, but this just seems a little strange for the Gap. Especially since you can't find any evidence of this line of clothing on their regular website. I had to search for Gap Red, which takes you to the Gap, Inc. page dedicated to the line. I just hope it's not that hard to find the clothes in the actual stores.

Also, does anyone else find it disturbing that these clothes are actually made in Africa? Do they have to work for their relief money?