by Cross Woodfield

American Apparel has a pretty scandaloso website in my personal opinion.  There are pictures of girls in too-thin tights with white underwear underneath, boys with their hands pretty close to their salty spots, and spread legs alllll over the place.

It makes me wonder what the difference is between advertising and porn, whether they are distracting from the clothes, and who these models are….

First things first: I guess they are thinking up mildly pornographic, mildly disturbing ads to sell the clothes not the people…so that makes it not porn??  What do you think?

Second, I think they are doing well (amidst the crisis) because they’re selling more than cotton. American Apparel basically defined and then clothed their newly-knowledgable and self-aware sub-culture:  the hipsters.  So those ads make me want to buy it no matter what the models look like because I want to look like the models and I want to be like them.  American Apparel is selling a lifestyle and giving you the guidebook (the apparel).

Third, I don’t know who these models are, but I think I’d be scared to leave the house if I found out I was going to be topless in leather high-waisted leggings on a huge billboard in Times Square! 

How would you feel??  Would you pose semi-nude and completely sexualized for an American Apparel photographer? I feel like I can just picture a seventeen-year-old girl being coerced into posing upside down and crying a little. 

It’s a little weird that a company so tenacious about fair labor and peaceful equality is a little violent when it comes to marketing.

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