Strip Tees, Kate Flannery
Strip Tees, Kate Flannery
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Strip Tees
A Memoir of Millennial Los Angeles

Author: Kate Flannery

Narrator: Kate Flannery

Unabridged: 7 hr 15 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 07/18/2023


Synopsis

This program is read by the author.

“Compelling and brave, Kate’s story is a must read for all young women learning how to navigate adulthood and identity.” —Lili Reinhart, New York Times bestselling author

Strip Tees is a fever dream of a memoir—Hunter S. Thompson meets Gloria Steinem—about a recent college graduate and what happens when her feminist ideals meet the real world.

At the turn of the new millennium, LA is the place to be. “Hipster” is a new word on the scene. Lauren Conrad is living her Cinderella story in the “Hills” on millions of television sets across the country. Paris Hilton tells us “That’s hot” from behind the biggest sunglasses imaginable, while beautiful teenagers fight and fall in love on The O.C.

Into this most glittering of supposed utopias, Kate Flannery arrives with a Seven Sisters diploma in hand and a new job at an upstart clothing company called American Apparel. Kate throws herself into the work, determined to climb the corporate fashion ladder. Having a job at American Apparel also means being a part of the advertising campaigns themselves, stripping down in the name of feminism.

She slowly begins to lose herself in a landscape of rowdy sex-positivity, racy photo shoots, and a cultlike devotion to the unorthodox CEO and founder of the brand. The line between sexual liberation and exploitation quickly grows hazy, leading Kate to question the company’s ethics and wrestle with her own.

Strip Tees captures a moment in our recent past that’s already sepia-toned in nostalgia, and also paints a timeless portrait of a young woman who must choose between what business demands and self-respect requires.

A Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt & Company.

About Kate Flannery

Kate Flannery was born and raised in Northeastern Pennsylvania. She holds a BA in Creative Writing from Bryn Mawr College and currently works for the Emmy Award-winning RuPaul’s Drag Race. She is the lead singer and frontwoman for LA’s premier Little Richard tribute band, Big Dick. Strip Tees is her first book.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Meike on July 29, 2023

This memoir does a fantastic job describing how a young, smart woman gets entangled in a system build on sex and the abuse of power until, much too late, she realizes what she got herself into - so while Flannery's coming-of-age happened in the aughts, the content is highly relevant (here in Germany......more

Goodreads review by Thomas on September 23, 2023

I found this overall an engaging and well-written memoir. Kate Flannery writes about her time working at American Apparel and how she witnessed the blurring of lines between sexual liberation and outright exploitation. There’s an entertainment factor in this memoir that’s derived from the kind of gl......more

Goodreads review by Kat on May 03, 2024

A memoir of Indie sleaze that will leave you feeling grimy. 2.5 stars. Spring 2010. I bought a Kelly green overalls romper and a pair of blue-and-white seersucker bloomers at the American Apparel store in New Orleans. I really have no clue what I was thinking, running around looking like a "sexy todd......more

Goodreads review by Wolfie (wolfgang.reads) on December 26, 2022

Strip Tees is a captivating, humorous and humanizing memoir about a young woman's new career at a budding retail company-slash-aspiring revolution called American Apparel. Hey, remember American Apparel? I bet a vague recollection of their sexually-fueled minimalistic ads came to mind. You know the o......more

Goodreads review by Olavia on August 04, 2023

I stumbled upon this book by sheer chance, without the faintest idea of what to expect from it. I thought I might just leaf through the first few pages and then maybe leave it unattended like so many other books on my reading pile. However, once I opened it, there was no putting it down. I ended up......more


Quotes

“As the author details her initiation into the realities of corporate misogyny, the author provides a disturbing look at the dangerous ways modern capitalism can debase, deform, and blind the individuals it exploits...A candid and provocative memoir.
Kirkus

Hypnotically devastating and funny in unexpected ways, Kate Flannery's Strip Tees fearlessly guides us back to her early working days, questioning her choices while exposing the heartbreaking, often outrageous, manipulations that seduced her into the cult-like milieu of American Apparel. It's so wild, and she captures it superbly.
—Laura Albert, aka JT LeRoy, author of Sarah and The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things

Strip Tees was a book I could not put down. As I read Kate Flannery's memoir of being one of the first American Apparel employees, I was flooded with Millennial nostalgia and then hit by the realization that I wore tube socks as a 14-year-old girl because Dov Charney was into old issues of Hustler where women wore tube socks. This book is a feminist, inside look at one of the creepiest corners of the 2000s.”
—Blythe Roberson, author of How to Date Men When You Hate Men

“Reading Kate Flannery’s memoir Strip Tees felt like stepping into a Sofia Coppola film about Los Angeles in the mid-aughts: Everyone is smiling and laughing and flirting and then the soundtrack turns ominous and the walls start to melt. This book is a rapid, queasy descent into hipster hell, and I couldn’t get enough of it.”
—Heather Havrilesky, Ask Polly columnist and author of Foreverland: On the Divine Tedium of Marriage

“Kate Flannery's technicolor tale of innocence lost is a searing, time-capsule portrait of the American millennial dreamscape--both it's shimmering veneer and sordid underbelly--backlit by sex, sun and scandal, and written in prose that sings as it breaks your heart. Every generation produces a handful of memoirs that define it. Strip Tees is one of them. I couldn't put it down.”
David Goodwillie, author of Kings County