![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-930037-100x100.png\")
Fantastic advertising.
1 replies
Fantastic advertising.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-91037-100x100.png\")
So instead of being made in sweatshops in china, they are made in LA by illegals. Interesting....
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-605040-100x100.png\")
wow, I need to bookmark that page for later on tonight.....
Wow, those ads are well...damn, I am far from prude (I own a huge porn collection) but damn....that is like seriously soft core porn.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-690585-100x100.png\")
@itiswhatitis: Just another terrific consumer-oriented service from the crack team at Consumerist. Always trying to help us find new ways to save, yay!
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-349596-100x100.png\")
Whoever says \"Sex sells anything\"
IS DEAD WRONG. I'm ALL for a little sexy and presumptuous, but this is just a bit trashy in my mind. This is the reason why our nations male youth grab the Sunday paper and run into the bathroom... who needs playboy anymore?
Not cool, American Apparel. Just not cool.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-32381-100x100.png\")
@Verucalise(wantsherfigureback): I agree completely. I'm NOT a prude in the least, but this is just... cheap advertising. Cheap, trashy - no art or subtly involved, which is really a keystone to advertising.
![\"user-pic\"](\"/css/images/default.gif\")
@Verucalise(wantsherfigureback):
The nation's male youth runs to the bathroom with the Sunday paper?
Since when?
@Verucalise(wantsherfigureback): Sunday paper? Psshh... there is so much free porn right on the internet. I've had broadband since I was 11...
@zonk7ate9: Lucky you. I didn't include the interwebs option because these were printed ads, and I wanted to compare the equivolent.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-436259-100x100.png\")
@Verucalise(wantsherfigureback): As a mom of multiple kids, you relinquished your license to talk about what immature kids these days love to look at. Consider this your C&D notice.
@MostlyHarmless: #1- How old you think I am?
#2- I'd rather buy my son a porno mag than this crap.
#3- If this is what my daughters aspire to become, put a bullet in my head. I'd rather they be a porn star themselves than this half assed attempt.
@Verucalise(wantsherfigureback):
Also, in a really lazy move, I halfassed my way through the original comment. (Imagine that, procrastinating at my procrastination.)
Anyways, it should have said something along the lines of \"as a mom, you are now all mature and stuff, and therefore you have no idea how lame some of the not similarly enlightened folks can be.\"
I just cant find a way to say that succinctly AND make it sound funny-ish.
@Verucalise(wantsherfigureback):
Lol. I do appreciate the \"If you're going to do it, do it right; don't half-ass it\" attitude.
@Esquire99: F YEAH!! Just think about those girls in high school, blue balling every guy in sight... just, wrong.
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-857028-100x100.png\")
I'm so torn on American Apparel. On one hand I like how their clothing is made in the US and pays it's workers a living wage (which is the reason the clothes are a little more expensive). On the other hand, most of the clothes are fugly and don't work for you if you aren't a size 2 and a scenester.
As far as the ads go, they are a business that is trying to sell their products, and business models have proved time and time again that sex sells. Do I wish it were that way? Not necessarily. I wish that advertising in general was a little less misogynistic, but I don't think we can lay blame solely on the company. They give the people what they want...and the people seem to want thinly veiled porn.
@brandihendrix: If they're hiring that many illegal workers, you can be sure they're not paying them all legal minimum wage.
@picardia: eh, that isn't necessarily true. I work in construction and a huge percentage of our workers are undocumented (I hate the term Illegal. PEOPLE can't be illegal)
ALL of our workers make at least $10 an hour and most start out at $14/hour.
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-48863-100x100.png\")
Some of these girls could use a Happy Meal.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-131723-100x100.png\")
Jezebel is going to have a field day with this one, their hatred of American Apparel and its sexually harassing owner is epic.
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-1159581-100x100.png\")
Wow... I'd never seen any of those ads before. Okay, to be honest, I'd never even heard of American Apparel before today. But I know for a fact that I will be visiting their site. I love those pictures. The human body is nothing to be ashamed of, and keep in mind that sex is the fundamental reason for our existence. Without it, we wouldn't exist, so why not market with it? To think otherwise kind makes you, well... a prude. Must be America's Puritanical ancestry.
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-321187-100x100.png\")
@osiris73: The \"whatsa matter baby you uptight?\" routine was lame even back in the 1960s. Sorry, but some of us really are capable of understanding that not every depiction of a naked female is a healthy, un-puritanical celebration of sexuality.
Anyone want to bet how many of the 'sex sells' and 'the human body is natural' prattling we'd here if Dov Charney sold all his products with soft-core peen shots?
@osiris73: If these were just celebrations of the human body blah blah blah, then there would be a few men in their underwear, striking poses on coffee tables. But American Apparel doesn't celebrate that kind of human body.
Baseline: Women are for sale. Men aren't. Fuck that.
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-1238020-100x100.png\")
@osiris73: I absolutely adore nude art and the human body, but this disgusts me.
It's not 'art' or beautiful or in good taste. It's exploitative and just as close to porn as this company could get while still having the ads run.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-562864-100x100.png\")
@osiris73: Put me down as a \"prude\" then.
I love my wife's body, it's one of the reasons I married her. I'm not against sex. But that's not the only reason I love my wife.
Porn has the effect of treating women as objects and not people. It rips apart families and causes unhealthy addictions.
Your statement about not being ashamed of the human body is stupid. Do you walk around naked in public? There is a proper time and place for exposing body parts, and advertisements aren't the place.
@GuinevereRucker: Your wife's a lucky woman. People don't believe me when I tell them that my husband doesn't look at other women like that either.
@Toffeecake: No man is infallible if he has any amount of testosterone.
That's why I wish these ads were illegal. I don't want the temptation around.
@GuinevereRucker: I didn't say that he's infallible, he just doesn't look as a general rule, which is more than I could have asked for. He actually happened on the A.A. website while looking for some socks for me the other day, and told me about some of these ads. Unfortunately, he bought the socks before I could warn him about all the other stuff that's wrong with the company, particularly the owner.
@Toffeecake: If only we could clone your husband's values in this area and inject them into all the porn-addicted men in the world :)
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-537475-100x100.png\")
@osiris73: I think you need context, though. These ads aren't being produced for the artistic and aesthetic quality of the human body - they're being produced because Dov Charney, the sleazeball owner of American Apparel. He's not a good person, and seems to objectify women at every turn.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-929652-100x100.png\")
@pecan 3.14159265: Very true. Still hard to look away, though...they certainly capture attention, as I'm sure they were designed to do. I've read Jezebel's bits on Dov Charney...he's a real winner, A+ guy. Heh.
@osiris73: I have to say...I'm a straight, non-scenester female, clearly not the targeted market for the amount of flesh in these ads. But they are captivating. From an artistic standpoint, they're pretty incredible. At least to my untrained eyes. :)
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-570288-100x100.png\")
I really want to click on the article, but I don't want to be fired. Then again, if I give up eating because I have no income, I might have a future as an AA model....
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-762676-100x100.png\")
America needs to get the f#ck over it. It's such an embarrassment to be a member of a society that practically riots in the streets over a single tit barely-revealed for a couple seconds during a football game...or that complains about these ads. Or any ads. Or frankly, damn near anything having to do with body parts in general. Grow up.
@YouDidWhatNow?: Grown-ups know the difference between \"the human body is beautiful and sex is normal\" and \"here's some pussy, buy our T-shirts\". If you become one you may figure that out.
@YouDidWhatNow?: And you need to learn what the words \"modesty\" and \"decency\" mean, and grow up yourself.
No one objects to the use of \"sluttiest\" in the ads? I'm surprised, because posing semi-nude (ok almost totally nude, which is odd for clothing) and being a \"slut\" are totally different.
Where's the journalistic integrity?
@Drew5764: I agree with veg-o-matic. I think the title was supposed to be compelling and tongue-in-cheek, not a commentary. It's very obvious that the article-writers consider the AA ads artistic photography. Otherwise they'd have selected all nude photos and been done with it.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-926607-100x100.png\")
@Drew5764: I read it as a comment on the ads themselves being \"slutty,\" but certainly not as a judgment on the models in the ads.
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-917643-100x100.png\")
See, I think mentioning the layoffs second is burying the lead here. But I also clicked through that whole ad slideshow, so what do I know?
This is not any different than Ambercrombie & Fitch's maybe gay/maybe not pin-up porn in their stores. Being a straight guy, I just can't get into the mood of shopping for jeans when there is a picture of a half naked muscle man in boxers grabbing his junk looking at me. Call me insecure.
@CaesarBach: What about 4 or 5 shirtless guys playing football? \"Fumble! Oh no, dog pile!\"
@brandihendrix: These types of stories require photographic evidence.
@CaesarBach: Insecure. ;) j/k
Kind of reminds me of something that happened in Victoria's Secret a few years ago. I was trying on this barely-there little thing in the dressing room and I spin around to see...a HUGE poster in the dressing room of one of their models wearing the exact same thing, but so much better than me. It was a little disheartening and I wonder why they don't try and keep those things out of the dressing room.
I did not buy anything that day.
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-389492-100x100.png\")
@brandihendrix: yeah, they'd do much better to show a poster of a model wearing their lingerie, poorly fitted and with weird bulges - right next to the mirror.
this is why popular girls in high school keep a few not so pretty friends around: it makes them look better by comparison
I'm thinking of taking a lunch break downtown today. Oh look there's AA, maybe they could use a photographer...?
You guys are going to have to make that 51 sluttiest ads. With numerous outtakes.
...
As for the layoffs, I like how I.C.E. hit-up AA in downtown who actually pays a legal wage. How about hitting California's central valley and seeing how many of the field-hands are documented immigrants being paid a legal wage? I support targeting and fining businesses that hire illegal immigrants, but I would like to see the businesses that take advantage of those immigrants be targeted first.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-414437-100x100.png\")
hehe... while I was looking at this my wife peeked in from the other room and immediately accused me of looking at porn.
At least now I know the right excuse \"Baby! They're just American Apparel ads! It's not porn!\"
I still don't know what I'll do if she notices the trannies.
Honestly, what morons pay for porno anymore? Between free pic/video sites, your old sister (incestuous? .grin.) site fleshbot and bit torrent for any full length movies I want, I haven't paid for porno in the last two years except for the one time I rented one for a bacholer party limo bus.
If you pay regularly for porno you truly are one of the most pathetic people in the world.
i think i saw nipple in of them and lol faye raegan is a porn star
seach faye reagan up
Those ads practically have smell-o-vision. Gross. It's about time they got popped by immigration. They are among the biggest wage busters in LA's garment district.
What they don't tell you is that these are really ads for power tools. Your choice of battery operated or plug-in.
People who complain about their clothes being ugly or the store being for hipsters/scenesters/whatever ridiculous name they come up with have probably never actually set foot in one. Cause if they had they would realize half the store is pretty much basics; tshirts, underwear, and other stuff that most everyone wears everyday, albeit often in a far slimmer size and cut then most people wear. I own a closet full of American Apparel stuff and none of it is retro 80's stuff; almost all of it are button up shirts, dress pants, tshirts, or other basics. I wear most of it to work in a most certainly not hip workplace; a state agency.
And commentors need to stop being neurotic about weight issues. On one thread everyone piles on for people choosing to be fat, choosing to eat terrible food, and then when theres ad's of people being slim, everyone calls them anorexic. For God sakes the first photo shown on the site is of a girl whose 150 lbs. which no one would suggest is anorexic by any stretch of the imagination. So whats the ideal look for the Consumerist reader? The kind of dumpy, but not too dumpy girl and the guy with a slight paunch, but not too much? Jesus.
@halfcuban: Nice. I agree. I'd rather someone just look generally healthy, I guess. Nothing is more attractive than a man or woman who feels comfortable in their own skin, who might have more or less but who the frig cares.
The neurotic ones are party poopers.
@Verucalise(wantsherfigureback): ok, i'm not trying to be snide or mean, but i did get a giggle out of your handle mentioning you want your [i know it's post pregnancy] figure back and talking about being comfortable in your own skin.
but of course it's hard to be comfortable in your own skin when you just spent 9 months harboring a little belly stretcher
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-137505-100x100.png\")
My only problem with these ads is that so many of those girls are sporting that strung-out-on-heroin look that I thought died in the nineties. Or is that retro now? Anyway, in this economy, I didn't think anyone could afford heroin anymore.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-436584-100x100.png\")
Love their ads.
Hate what they stand for.
End result = window shopping
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-77175-100x100.png\")
Most of those ads seriously look like something someone would take of you and you'd see it and think \"FUCK! Destroy that photo!\"
Far from being a prude, I just don't get them but I don't really get any ads aimed at women that show a bunch of \"sexy\" women doing \"naughty\" things.
Seeing a naked girl touching herself doesn't make ME want to buy pants. Maybe I'm weird.
I am in no way, shape, or form a prude. I grew up in Los Angeles and I go to college in SANTA CRUZ. I think Victoria's Secrets ads are hot stuff. I am all for advertising that has a bit of sexuality in it, even straight-up sex when it's done well.
I have an issue that American Apparel doesn't do it WELL. They don't discern between, say, practical clothing they have versus the non-practical clearly-intended-for-strutting-your-stuff \"clothing.\" It comes off as trashy and somehow exploitative rather than artistic or well-done (I'm speaking as an artist and photographer here).
American Apparel sexualizes every single article of womens clothing, versus -showing you the clothing-. This ad, for example - [stylecrave.com] - I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THE FIT OF THE UNDERWEAR IS. The only point of that photo is her ass. Which would be fine, but American Apparel doesn't call it what it is.
There's something else that bothers me too - look at American Apparel's mens section. Compare the photos from the mens underwear section with the womens underwear section.
Maybe it's just me, but there's a big discrepancy there.
If you're going to be sexual, DO IT RIGHT, DO IT HONESTLY, AND SEE IT THROUGH, DAMMIT.
(Hell, if nothing else, it's unfair to the ladies and gay guys out there who're looking for some steamy ads.)
@mon0zuki: I could not agree with you more. I don't even see clothing in some of the pictures. I would be hard-pressed to identify most of them as ads at all. They look like the kind of pics teenagers post on MySpace.
@mon0zuki: It's not even so much of 'they don't do it well'. The 'it' is saying 'look, naked chicks, so buy our stuff'. Which has the side effect of telling a large part of their customer base to go jump in the lake.
I like it. Women should be free to make a living by using their bodies.
@Verucalise(wantsherfigureback): \"Sex sells\" is code for \"hurrrr, boobies\". Sex doesn't really sell all by itself. If it did, AA wouldn't be touting its image as a company that pays workers well.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-391013-100x100.png\")
God I hate them.