The New American Apparel Ads: Is This Too P0rn-y?

01/27/2011 3:00 pm by

American Apparel’s new print advertising campaign employs some clever, cutting-edge advertising techniques. And by that I of course mean a liberal application of tits and ass.

Yes, indeedy. Always classy, AA’s January 2011 print ad campaign again treads (redraws?) the line between Sex Sells and Soft Core, offering a bounty of images of young, half-dressed, barely-legal-looking women in poses and positions that bear a striking resemblance to pre- or post-coital stills from porn vids. Though to AA’s credit, they DO art things up with a few hand-drawn pencil sketches… of girls taking their panties off. AND one could of course argue they’re doing pre-teen boys everywhere a favor, offering them easy, legal access to wank material…

Needless to say, these ads are NSFW, and don’t say I didn’t warn you. Click the thumbnails to view the embiggened image.

If you’re so inclined, there’s more over in American Apparel’s ad gallery.

And it’s not so much the nudity, or the presumed age of the models – Madison Avenue has been playing those cards for years – it’s the creepy, voyeuristic quality of the images that digs at me. Like I almost imagine the next AA campaign to be a series involving grainy photos of young girls posed in basements chained to radiators or something. IT PUTS THE LOTION ON ITS SKIN OR IT GETS THE HOSE AGAIN.

But maybe that’s just me.

So what do you think? Is this taking things too far? Are these the kinds of images you want to see in the magazines you subscribe to? Am I just an old crotchety lady, and those kids should get off my lawn?

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About Tracey Gaughran-Perez

Tracey is a PhD dropout, geek, and mom. Follow her on Twitter, Google+, and Tumblr.

Filed Under: Advertising, Art, Best Of Featured, Best Of MamaPop, Celebrities, It's Not Pr0n, It's American Apparel, Print, Things That Suck, TV, Uncategorized, WTF? Tagged With: , , , , ,


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  • http://allaboutavacakes.com avasmommy

    Nobody is paying any attention to the clothing in those ads. Why the nudity? It just seems gratuitous.

  • http://www.alotofloves.com Marilyn @ A Lot of Loves

    American Apparel is just ugh. They’ve pushed the envelope so far that they pretty much have no where else to go. Soon they’ll be like that Robbie Williams video where he rips off his skin because you can’t really show much more than this.

  • http://www.agirlandaboy.com/journal agirlandaboy

    I think I might actually be more disturbed by those pleated pants. Please Hammer, don’t make me wear ‘em.

    • http://snarkyamber.tumblr.com Snarky Amber

      Bitch stole my comment! Those pants are heinous.

    • http://www.thepalinode.com Palinode

      Argh. You totally took my comment. Good one.

    • http://glorifiedloveletters.blogspot.com Sara H

      Word.

  • norm

    Knowing what we know about Charney I would guess the porn references are overt. And that utterly sucks. He’s a monster. I do however quite often see AA ads that are cute and/or tasteful (there’s one on a city bus here that’s breathtaking) and those just piss me off too because of the existence of the bad ones. And Charney. Ugh.

    • http://www.traceygaughranperez.com Sweetney

      That dude is the dictionary definition of Scumbag. And it shows.

  • http://www.nopointsforstyle.com Adrienne

    The words cheap and skeevy come to mind.

  • Trilby

    I’ve always thought AA ads were trashy bordering on pr0n. The new ads are just more of the same. I agree with @avasmommy, no one is paying attention to the clothes with boobs in their face.

  • http://www.mamakaren.com MamaKaren

    No, you’re not out of line. Those ads are creepy. They look like the low quality Polaroid photos that get found in the basement of the skeevy school janitor whose arrest gets broadcast on the local news.

    I never understood the concept of selling clothing by making ads of naked people (Abercrombie and Fitch is a prime example). I guess it’s the whole “any press is good press” thing- if there is debate about the ads, people are talking about the company and its product. But, still- EW.

  • http://notinkansasanymoretoto.typepad.com jenny

    wait, I”m confused. The ones that are sketches are actually running in regular magazines, not Playboy? I didn’t think you could show nipples, even in a drawing. And do the Cotton Ad Council people have an opinion about this? Because it’s a little far from Colbie Caillat singing in her closet.
    Regardless, they are skeevy and stupid.

  • http://tyhardaway.com ty

    Just when I thought Dov and AA were tossed into the irrelevant bin (next to the yawn-it’s-not-shocking-or-edgy-anymore-dov bin), I read two pieces just today (this one and an SC draft of an AA bankruptcy piece for next week).

    Maybe he is doing something right.

    Note: AA voted best place to shoplift.

  • http://www.agirlandaboy.com Simon

    As I mentioned in my T&T recap, I’m a man that loves boobies, so I love the ads. But they are best kept out of print, and left on the internet where at least the kids can’t see them.

    Oh, wait…

  • http://www.bostonlime.blogspot.com Melissa

    Oh my god I feel so old and I’m not even 23 yet. NOT OKAY oh dear god you’re selling clothes why are you not showing any?

  • Suzy Q

    Sheesh. It’s like a pedophile’s dream.

    Also, those pleated pants? Just no. NO.

  • Linda

    From a design standpoint, they’re interesting because they’re very much in the style of ads from the 70s. The nudity reminds me a lot of the pot ads — half-naked girls holding a pipe or some such thing. Because when you need pot you always leave the house without pants :)

    But in real-time, these are in bad taste. Maybe Dov honestly doesn’t care about pissing off the American public, but I’m sure he may change his mind when a million magazines turn down the ads or insist on “modifications” to make them palatable for an audience who’d maybe like to read their magazine in public.

  • http://www.annaironside.com Anna

    It just seems so douchey. And I do NOT want to be wearing douchey clothing.

  • http://www.snotw.com Rachael

    What the hell man? These are awful. I would be pissed if my kid came across one in a magazine. Also, there is no way these ads are in any way convincing anyone to buy these clothes. NO way.

  • marlena

    the clothes are pretty ugly even on cute skinny chicks. no amount of boobies is going to sell a lot of hideous high waisted leggings and pants from the 80′s made out of crappy looking fabric. the whole campaign has a creepy kind of vibe to me. maybe i am not the target audience.

  • http://www.uniscorn-autumnalyssa.blogspot.com/ autumnalyssa

    Here’s my take: three of them are fine. I mean, not tasteful, but fine. The “Nudes,” the one with the white bandeau top, and the crop top with leggings are fine. The pleated pants with boobies? Just weird. Look. The pants are ugly, boobies aren’t going to sell them. The girl laid out on the patio table? Weird and disturbing. But the worst are the pencil drawings, because they aren’t dealing with real people who we can look at and say, “yeah, she looks twelve but she’s probably not.” These drawings are of girl-children. Taking off their panties. It really really isn’t okay.

    • Mona

      Oh I SO I agree. Most of these are just kind of dumb looking (seriously, where do they get off even having the word apparel in their name?). But the line drawings are horrifyingly creepy. Like FBI raiding your computer and putting the shackles on you creepy, you AA creepy Chester freaks.

    • http://www.thepalinode.com Palinode

      But here’s the thing: the line drawings are not necessarily of ‘real’ subjects, and therefore are less exploitative than the actual photographs. But they feel worse, don’t they?

      • http://www.rageagainsttheminivan.com Kristen

        Eh. I dunno. The result will still be guys jacking off to an image of a prepubescent girl, ya know?

        • http://www.thepalinode.com Palinode

          Sure (although I hope not): but photos mean that genuine people were exploited. Drawings, paintings, etc. are nothing but someone’s imagination, even if they look realistic.

        • http://www.thepalinode.com Palinode

          Perhaps it comes down to which you’d rather: a guy getting off a drawing of a prepubescent girl, or an actual prepubescent girl being violated and photographed. The latter seems infinitely worse.

          • http://www.uniscorn-autumnalyssa.blogspot.com/ autumnalyssa

            I was working on the assumption that the girls in the photos weren’t actually prepubescent, but older girls that look very young. But if I’m wrong about that, then yeah, the photos are worse.

          • Mona

            All fully gross, but I was also assuming the actual photographed girls were older, and in any case looked older than the imaginary girls in sketches, who looked like 14 year olds and so, yeah… Yuckier somehow
            Also, this shit is even scarier than weeping CLOWN art.

  • Dody

    Creepy… so when can we arrest him for distributing child porn since the drawings are obviously of children. They can sentence a man to prison for 10 years for getting a comic that MAY have children in sexual poses, but this guy creates them for an ad and it’s A ok.

  • Arby

    I feel conflicted… They are what they obviously are, and yet I’m thinking “At least they aren’t photoshopped”. :-/ Take this one for example: http://www.americanapparel.net/presscenter/ads/_utils/view.html?w=370&h=495&f=http://www.americanapparel.net/presscenter/ads/images/a8000/type3/8582_Eva.jpg
    …blemishes, armpit stubble, all sorts of skin variances in the thighs, etc… The glossy fake women in print is something women have been fighting against, right? Is this particular image a step in the right direction, or just a step sideways?

  • cak

    This is absolutely disgraceful. Oh, and could you please post bigger images next time.

  • Jack

    fap fap fap fap

  • http://www.mcdonnellism.com anastasia

    Oh my god, I couldn’t even see the boobies past those horrific pleated pants. I can see where t&a is completely necessary in their marketing – with clothes that heinous, something needs to be appealing.

    [and fwiw...not okay.]

  • http://www.rageagainsttheminivan.com Kristen

    American Apparel makes me stabby. It’s like a home ec project gone wrong.

    Boobs . . . whatever. Drawings of young girls in sexualized poses? So inappropriate. And yeah, how is the Cotton industry signing off on that use of their logo?

  • http://butterbeanandcobra.blogspot.com/ beta dad

    Yeah, they’re porny all right. And the drawings are especially creepy. But the pleated pants thing is the most disturbing. It makes me feel dirty, but in a bad way, like paying a hooker to wear my grandma’s pants. May she rest in peace. Grandma, that is.

  • Jilliana

    I’m not really surprised by the newest ads, but that could be because AA’s ads have always been a bit porn-y (pornish?) to me. Really, I think the new ads were put out so that people would talk about that and stop talking about the fact that Charney has driven what was once an innovative and realistically sustainable business model straight into the ground.

  • Abraham

    What’s really disturbing is the Illustrations, the girls seem like there 13 with slightly matured bodies, it just feels like a pedophiles dream. I found on another link where they mention the Illustrator does stuff for “Barley Legal”, does anybody know the artist name? Sorry, I cannot get close to this pre-teen art.

    http://www.thedrum.co.uk/news/2011/01/27/18056-american-apparel-courts-controversy-once-more-with-new-ads/

  • http://babybagle.blogspot.com baglemommie

    Puhlease! I do not want to spend $78 on a Unisex Fisherman’s Pullover that looks like it used to belong to Mr. Rogers.

    Interesting. AA sells mens clothes, but I’ve never seen any scandalous print ad for their men’s line. Don’t they sell cotton banana hammocks?