American Apparel ads strike again

American Apparel. Oh how your ads manage to elicit eye-rolling, middle fingers, concentrated stares, countless blog posts, buckets of outrage and no doubt many a masturbatory thought. You certainly stir things up. Of course, you're just one of many clothing companies to use ads this way (Calvin Klein and A&F catalogs immediately come to mind), so you've got unoriginality going for you in that regard. Then there's the fact that most of the time after seeing your ads, all I know for sure is your company sells socks, tights and underwear. Do you have other clothes? I have no idea, not that it matters since I don't shop at your stores, or ever plan to.

This is one of the latest batch of ads out of American Apparel (thanks to Bitch magazine, who also discusses the accusation that AA is firing its employees who aren't "hot." Also posted at change.org.)


So absurd. Maybe these ads work on some people (as in gets them to come in the store or go online and purchase these advertised products), but it has the opposite affect on me. Even taking out the "sex" of the ads, it's like ... oh, hey, pink tights. Wow. Never seen those before.

I wrote a bit about AA, more than a year ago, and I can't even be bothered to go see if there's been any conclusion to the lawsuit I mentioned. I will say this: if you want to see more of their ads and you do a Google search for them, be aware that it will definitely be NSFW, as boobs and butt are everywhere.

But that leads me to this point: go read this excellent post on The Apostate, aptly titled "Declaring a moratorium on the phrase 'sex sells.'" It contains this point:

No, sex – in all its troublesome, glorious, tragic, funny reality – can’t be sold to people who’d rather die than admit themselves to be sexual creatures. What does sell is women’s bodies. The idea of “women’s bodies=sex” is so deeply ingrained in our culture that most people are unable to separate the two.

Refreshingly truthful, and American Apparel ads exemplify this to a T.