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Jaimee Phippen
Mrs. Lazcano-Pry
English 101
30 October 2014

American Apparel and Over sexualization.

What are ads? Ads are ways to get an item seen in creative ways. Why do we use them?
Simply put we use them to show off, Look at my product its so pretty. NO! Look at mine
there is a pretty girl using it! You cant walk down the street, turn on the television, listen to
music or even read a magazine without an ad throwing itself at you. As time has gone by ads
have begun to get increasingly more widespread and over sexualized. They have become almost
threatening. Ads can make you feel guilty, sad, ugly, left out all to sell their item. As time goes
on they are getting worse and the worse thing about them is the representation of the genders in
advertisements in todays society. What can ads today tell us about our society by using these
sexual implications?

The ad I choose to look at is one from American Apparel. They are known for their over
sexualized ads for simple things like a t-shirt which is modeled by a pantless model who flashes
her breasts in the second photo. The ad I choose shows that they do sexualize the women while
the men are presented normally and fully clothed. The ad is a side by side photo of a man and a
woman. The man wears a plaid shirt and beige pants. He looks cool with his sunglasses on and

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the sun shining on him. It is an ad for plaid shirts. The contrast to him is the female on the other
side. She is in only a small pair of white underwear and the same plaid shirt as the man but only
buttoned once to cover her breasts. Why does the woman have to be almost naked to sell a shirt?
Cortese says The provocateur is not human; rather she is a form or hollow shell representing a
female figure. Accepted attractiveness is her only attribute. She is slender, typically tall and long
legged. Women are constantly held to this unrealistic standard of beauty. If they fail to attain it,
they are led to feel guilty and ashamed.(Cortese,53)
Sex is a main component in many advertising campaigns that currently run across the
world. Ads in the 50s and 60s were sexist but it seems like the ads now a days are almost trying
to outdo these vintage donts. From showing a woman being literally walked all over to
advertising technology as So easy to use, a woman could do it. The scary thing is companies
like M & Ms even sex up their ads by making the one female overly sexy. I thought the Green
M&M was supposed to be selling chocolate, not erotic appeal.
So why do we accept these types of ads in our modern society? Are we that okay with
women being quiet, unmoving, sexual items? We let companies objectify women in the name of
advertising. They put the same ads up of men but the difference is they get to keep their clothes
on. American Apparel is a company that continues to sexualize things that shouldnt even be
thought of in a sexual way. They publish explicit ads of mainly naked women and call them
artistic when in reality it is only the women being shown in a sexual light. Ads are getting
more and more horrible as time goes on. In the 50s yes, there were sexist ads but when it was a
woman only ad they came in all shapes and sizes. Not only size 0s graced the covers of
magazines. They were beautiful, full waisted, full faced beauties.

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When they create ads like this they are showing their disrespect for women. These girls
are being exposed and shown off like animals for butchering. There is no way they didnt make
these ad to entice the male gender. American Apparel is a company made by men who want men
to shop in their stores and they think sexual ads will bring the customers in. They have even gone
as far as to pull the race card in some ads. Cortese wonderfully describes what kind of
representation advertising is creating. He says It creates a mythical, WASP-oriented world in
which no one is ever ugly, overweight, poor, toiling, or physically or mentally disabled. (51)
American Apparel completely fits into what he is saying. None of the people in these ads are, in
any way, blemished.
These ads are suggesting that we as a culture see women as purely sexual beings and not
actual people. To see these women in little to nothing while their male counter parts are fully
clothed looks horrible. As much as people will be in uproar about how it her body, why should
she hide it? and I feel those people, women are beautiful. We have curves and want to show
them off. These ads arent about showing off the human body they are to sexualize women for
men to see. This is a vulgar time we live in.
Cortese, like I did, questions what the consequences of living in a society that sexually
objectifies the female body will be. He says Internalizing cultural standards of feminine beauty
leads to increased shame and anxiety about the body and appearance because societal images of
idyllic beauty are virtually impossible. (Cortese, 55) He is right. When I first started to see ads
that American Apparel was producing, I had never felt worse about the skin that I was in. These
women who at times were, for lack of a better word, spread eagle just to advertise tights or
underwear were so skinny and tall. They had long hair and almost too white teeth, Id never be

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them no matter how badly I wanted to be. These standards that are now set for the girls who shop
there, who are as young as 14, are incredibly high.
What people are starting to see is that American Apparel is trying to cause drama for a
purpose. They want to be Risky, Provocative, Daring when in reality their ads are just a
sexist view into their company. The CEO of the company Dov Charney knows what he is doing.
He has even been sued for sexual harassment. This company could have had so much potential.
The drama they stir with their ads will never die down because they know even bad publicity is
good publicity. Their ads have the exact two things Cortese says an ad must have to be
persuasive. He says First it must raise you anxiety level. It should persuade you that you need
something; it should make you feel guilty, inferior, or somehow less than. American Apparel
is great at this. A sexy girl in a tiny top and very short skirt being touched by a sexy man, every
girl then feels like they need that outfit to feel like her, they need to get skinny. Next Cortese
says Second an ad must provide the solution, if an ad captures you on both levels, youre
hooked. The solution they provide is the price of the clothing and where to get it. They know
that girls will want and feel like they need what the model is wearing to live the life the model is
seen to be living.
What is hard to understand living in todays society is how we let this, well this crap be
shown to the public. We as a world try to tell women and girls to be comfortable with the skin
we are in, no matter the shape, size or color. How can we preach this and still allow brands to use
the same kind of model in every ad with little to no variety. Sure a company gets praised every
once in a while for using a woman or man of color but why should we celebrate something they
should have always been doing. We applaud when they put a plus size model on an ad when that

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should be the normal thing to see. Its like we pat them on the back for upholding basic human
decency.
On one final note I believe we as a society are too comfortable with the sexualizing
womens bodies to sell things. If the roles were reversed and we over sexualized men as much as
women there would be an outrage among the males. If we made them look as powerless as these
women and girls did they would be furious. There is not a chance in hell men would let women
advertisers make them look as weak and small as women do with our tiny bodies and lack of
clothing. How we got here I have no idea. All I know is that if we dont change how we portray
women in ads vs. men in ads our society will bring women down lower then we already feel.

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Works cited:

Cortese, Anthony J. Constructed Bodies, Deconstructing Ads: Sexism in

Advertising. Provocateur: Images of Women and Minorities in Advertising. 2nd ed.
Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2004. 51-82. Print.

flannel by American Apparel. Digital image. N.p., n.d. Web.

Holson, Laura M. (March 23, 2011). "Dov Charney of American Apparel Named in
Harassment Suit". The New York Times.