American Apparel ad banned in the UK for potentially sexualizing a person who appeared under 16.
Check out the link- she does certainly look to be more near 12.
Now, of course, we all know American Apparel has alot of sexualizing and exploitative ads, like this one, this one (nudity), this one, this one... list goes one. Look some more up if you want.
But
wait! you say. Lets not jump to conclusions, shall we? Of course not.
Maybe this company is just trying to ignore the prudish avoidance from
sex and nudity in the media, right? Lets find some of their male ads.
This male ad isnt exactly light on the sexual undertones, and then...? Wow, one ad? This looks promising, right?
Lets go to their site. Ouch. Just take in a few of those classy pics... all featuring females.
Heres their ad archive. Lets find those elusive sexy men, shall we?
Theres a gay one. Kind of close maybe? Maybe not.
Wow,
these are horrible. Hundreds of women, half nude, bent over, legs
spread... these belong on a porn site, not a clothing company. But Im
not even halfway yet. Maybe, once upon a time, American Apparel made
more than one sexy male ad.
Heres
one. No, not really. I just put that there BECAUSE ONE MAN IS SHIRTLESS
and even though they are not in any sort of provocative position, thats
as close as we may get.
Ooh, female masturbation. Thats not exploitative, is it?
Another gay one where one guy has his shirt off, while neither are being provocative...
Lesbianism? Thank God they dont exploit lesbians. What the fuck is this? Or this?
Stop linking, moving on...
More nudity... more exploitation... hey, heres a guy who is posing provocatively! This makes up for the fact that there were none from December 07 to the present, right?
Classy...
Here's their first exploitative ad...
Haha, I like this one! Says "Stirrup socks", shows said socks, and then random boobs! Okay, I quit.
Fuck you, American Apparel.
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I wouldn't say I like that ad, but why does she appear to be 12? She looks pretty developed to me. Apparently the model is like 23 or something. It seems the cutoff age in the UK is 16, so I'd say she could pass for a 15 year old, but I wouldn't assume she's 12.
Wow, some of those other ads are really far out there. They can't be American ads, can they? They wouldn't be able to use those in the states. Are those European ads? Because then they don't seem all that unusual.
British.
I had Bs bordering on Cs when I was 11, so it's not impossible. But even though I agree that she looks less like a 12-year-old, that's not really the point, is it?
Its not whether she looks like she COULD be 12 -- Pretty much anyone under 30 who isn't obviously wrinkled could concievably be 12, there's a lot of variation out there-- the question is whether she looks like its much more likely that she's 12 than that she's over 18, and I don't think it does at all.
Dov Charney - the owner of American Apparel - has been repeatedly accused of engaging in widespread sexual harassment at his company, of both the quid pro quo and hostile work environment variety, ranging from dating low ranking female employees to coming to work at his office stripped down to his underwear.
Not to mention the usual, far more mundane and less sensational, labor abuses in his garment factories (just like every other American garment manufacturer).
But what is so terrible about him running ads featuring sexualized images of women?
Yes, his ads aren't "classy" [whatever the hell that even means] and yes they show sexualized images of women - and what exactly is so wrong about that?
Because contributing to and strengthening media campaigns of this sort upholds a cultural bias against women, presenting their bodies as purely sexual objects, public property and the source of their value. And it is even more heinous when the models are intended to appear younger and younger.
Thank you for giving me more reasons not to give my money to American Apparel.
...Wow.
Does anyone else notice the look on the girl's face in the ad you've labeled "classy"? Like she's about to cry? Disgusting.
I really fucking hate American Apparel so these ads come as no surprise. I mean, this girl looks like she's being photographed in a state of forced undress. And she's not at all happy about it! I feel dirty just having looked at the pics.
However, I'm with Pantheon. Is there a reason you think she looks 12? When I clicked on the link I was expecting a really young looking girl and she looks old enough to me. Nowhere near 12.
Her body is obviously too developed to be anything near underage, but her face is disturbingly young-looking, at least from my perspective.
I hate American Apparel, but don't be ridiculous. She doesn't look twelve, and even if she looked young, would that mean that young looking women don't have the right to be viewed sexually? That a woman has to have childbearing hips and whatnot to be sexual? That's insulting.
"even if she looked young, would that mean that young looking women don't have the right to be viewed sexually?"
That's not the argument at all. It's that advertisers use models that can look pre-pubescent for a reason. They want the women to look like little girls in many cases, to look as young as they can. It's a certain fetish that many ascribe to. Look at barely legal porn for an example. Although I don't actually think this woman looks pre-pubescent.
Yes. I think that, legally, in the UK any image that's sexual and where the person looks like they might be under 18 potentially counts as *child porn* - even if they're 23. (Also, even if the prosecutors can't pull that off, whether or not the image is of someone under 18 is decided solely by the jury unless there's actual evidence available. Expert witnesses are not allowed - and remember, this is in the context of a child porn trial, which is going to lead the jury in a very definite direction).
It would be quite easy for someone who's not careful to wind up convicted of *making child porn* merely for possessing sexual images of the wrong 23 year old. The images wouldn't even have to be nude images...
She look very young to me- she could be 14 years old, which makes this child pornography to me. Very illegal. AA has no creativity- they use sex to sell their clothing, which does work, but is the easy way. Ugh.
I'm sorry but she does look very young to me. I have an 11 year old daughter, and she looks very close to how she looks, with the exception of the hair color, certain features, etc.
And I feel sick that I looked at that picture. I can't believe they call this advertising, but then why should I really be surprised?
I am not saying all girls at 11 or 12 look the same, but there is no mistake that this girl is at least close to being underage, if not underage at all.
All of these images are extremely distasteful, low class, and disgusting. The culture that has been infiltrating this world has been progressively getting worse. There is nothing wrong with mentally mature adults having sex the way they so choose, but to have it become so perverted that it includes disrespect toward women in general, comes with expectations that every woman is going to want her sex life to be like a porn movie, to sexualize CHILDREN, to have young girls thinking that it is NORMAL for boys to treat them like toilets! I'm sorry, there's no excuse for it.
It was bad when women were practically forced to save themselves for their husbands, but it's also bad when the tables of empowerment are flipped on us, and we become pieces of meat available to everyone all the time. It's even worse when it includes children. (How many young female celebrity child-stars have ended up posing nude or semi nude, or acting and dressing provocatively in videos?)
We are PEOPLE, not sexual objects that need to either be controlled or exploited.
Unless this sort of exploitation starts including men as well (which I do not wish), it needs to end.
"I am not saying all girls at 11 or 12 look the same, but there is no mistake that this girl is at least close to being underage, if not underage at all."
The model is actually 23 years old.
there is no mistake that this girl is at least close to being underage
Apparently she's 23. Even if underage is 18, that's not that close. I'm not a model, but at 24 I don't think I look any older than the woman in this ad.
I don't like these ads either, especially the ones listed in the top list of "this one, and this one, and this one" in this post. The close ups on crotches are especially bad.
But can't we dislike it without insisting that this woman looks obviously underage? There's a pretty big range of what women look like in the ages from puberty to mid-twenties. Its not uncommon for a 14 year old to be able to pass for 22, or a 25 year old to look 14. This woman doesn't especially look like she's obviously meant to be 12 (that would be, say, a girl with barely budding breasts), she just looks reasonably young and like she could pass for anywhere from 15 to 25. Insisting that she MUST be 12 just makes people who dislike this ad sound paranoid.
I was surprised when I clicked to the link because I didn't think the model looked very young. However, I have been seeing really young and sexualized girls in my new victoria secret catalogs and urban outfitter catalogs. Some that look a lot younger than this girl. I'm not sure if I just didn't notice this when I was younger or if this sexualization of pre-pubescent looking women is something that is getting worse. The cultural idea of beauty and obsession with youth seems to be getting worse and worse so I wouldn't be surprised if we see more and more of this.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I've totally lost the ability to tell someone's age just by looking at them. Thanks to a lifetime of ads, TV, and movies telling me that a 23 year old can look 12 and a 45 year old can "play" anything from 30 to 80, I sometimes have to spend an afternoon with family photo albums to even remember what an unaltered person of any age actually looks like. I honestly can't tell this model's age (although I have no doubt that American Apparel was trying to make her young and sexualize that youthful look very much on purpose).
Yeah, totally. I watch all these TV shows where 28 year olds play 16 year old high school students (how old was Sarah Michelle Gellar when she was playing a 16 year old Buffy, for example? And wasn't Ryan on The OC 30 when he was playing high school?). When I see real life high school students, I always think they look incredibly young in comparison.
So regarding this particular ad: I'd say that girl could play a jr high school student on the WB, but she doesn't look young enough to be a real life jr high school student.
(Of course she COULD be, since there's a ton of human variation and some 12 year olds do look older than some 25 year olds, but my point is it doesn't look very likely.)
From a glance at dates on Wikipedia, SMG was almost 20 when Buffy first aired, so not TOO far off. On the flip side, Charisma Carpenter was 27 and was supposed to present as the same age as SMG. But my favorite "old" high school student is Alan Ruck, born in 1956, who played Cameron in Ferris Bueller, which was released in 1986!
Dov Charney is fucking gross, but as others said, let's not kid ourselves.
She doesn't look 12. Hell, she doesn't even look under 16.
She looks 20-ish.
As another commenter pointed out, she's 23. But apparently she 'looks young' (determined by who? how?).
But, the ads are indeed scummy. So that part is definitely on-point.