Trigger Warning
The advertisement post that I have picked for this assignment contains nudity. The women in the ad have little to no clothing so if you find this idea triggering and/or upsetting, please do not continue on with this post.
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Original Advertisement:
American Apparel is a well-known company in terms of its association with controversial advertisements that often face constant backlash. These campaigns often involve questionable poses for models that always often seem to sexualize and objectify them. Their target demographic has always been catered towards young and vulnerable adolescent teens who are easily influenced by unattainable beauty standards. What also does hand in hand in those campaigns is the fact that what they’re trying to sell is this idea of sexual desire. It is the idea of the male gaze which depicts women in the eyes of a heterosexual male that displays women as just a sexual object for pleasure.
The purpose of this advertisement is to be able to sell stirrup socks to the consumer, but the images that are presented in the campaign completely redirects the attention of the viewer to the woman posing on the left as well as the woman on the right with her bare breasts out. The positioning of the image cuts off the faces of the women and it was most likely done with the purpose of dehumanizing them and removing any kind of humanity from them, making them merely an object. They are seen as objects of desire and not as real individuals who have thoughts, emotions, and intelligence. It only emphasizes that most of the viewers seeing the advertisement perceives it from the male gaze which is dominant.
The main problem at hand within this ad is not the nudity that is present, but it’s the fact that her sexuality is being taken away from her and that these kinds of images of hypersexualized women reinforce the idea that women are just playthings. The exposure of their body parts removes the power that women have over their sexuality and submits to the patriarchal social structure.
The philosophy of “sex sells,” is the marketing tactic behind American Apparel and are highly problematic and takes away the actual point which is to just sell the product without any means of objectifying women.
Jammed Version of the Advertisement:
In my jammed version of the advertisement, I wanted to address the problems that I outlined above. The goal was to subvert the advertisement by making the underlying message more obvious and highlight the harms of the campaign in relation to sexuality and gender.
As a result, the jamming philosophy that I was striving towards was to be able to bring out the idea of objectification that American Apparel not-so-subtly conveyed in their original advertisement. I added a question mark after the word “Stirrup Socks” that was displayed at the top right to show that the thing that they were trying to sell was not really stirrup socks, but the sexual desire that’s associated with women being objectified. This slight change is able to bring forth this question in the viewer of “What is it that they are trying to tell me? Are they really trying to promote socks to me, or is there something deeper?” By planting that small seed, it allows for the viewers to think deeply about the original motive of the ad and to question it.
Furthermore, I added some more text on the bottom to really bring out the message of the advertisement. I added “Don’t you mean Sexual Objectification,” at the bottom half to really show that American Apparel was trying to get at. It’s to solidify the answer that the viewer might have when questioning its motive. Yes, this campaign was made to objectify women by showing them headless, in weird and contorted poses, as mere objects to be glanced at for the voyeuristic. Additionally, I added “That’s” before the word “American Apparel,” to show that the mission and values of the company basically lie in exploiting the bodies of young women to use to sell products. It’s what American Apparel has done and is notorious for. It’s to show that companies are willing to use female bodies as something to be ogled at for the purpose of shock and in hopes that the consumer will be drawn towards it long enough to buy it. Hopefully, this message is able to convey that American Apparel is not the only company who participates in this kind of trajectory and is present in the fashion, food, and beauty industry and that viewers must be willing to educate themselves more on this topic and look out for marketing tactics like these.
Works Cited:
StyleCaster. “The 50 Most Porn-y American Apparel Ads Of All Time (NSFW).” StyleCaster, StyleCaster, 3 Nov. 2018, stylecaster.com/american-apparel/.