The advertisement I have chosen for my culture jamming assignment is from American Apparel, a clothing company that has become infamous for it’s use of controversial and hyper-sexual ads. Upon first glance this particular advertisement may not seem out of the ordinary. In fact, compared to other advertisements (like THIS one), these particular images might seem tame. By taking another look, however, and unpacking the ad, I decided that this is one of American Apparel’s more appalling campaigns.
The advertisement shows a young girl sprawled on a bed, leg cocked in one picture, and arm strewn above her head in the next. Her pose, the fact that her skirt has risen up to expose all of her thighs and some of her buttocks, her flushed-cheeks, and the distant look on her face all scream “sexual” without reverting to full on nudity, juxtaposed harshly against her age and her otherwise innocent appearance. Although American Apparel doesn’t tell us the age of the girl in the photos, the catchline “School’s Out” above her head indicates that her youthful appearance is intentional. They want us, the consumer, to think she is a child, and they want us to see her in a sexual context, as a sexual object.
There are three prominent problems I see with this advertisement: the first is the sexualization of children, the second is the commodification and objectification of women to sell a product, and the third is the way in which this image reinforces the idea that the ideal sexual body is a young sexual body. According to Stewart Ewen, images have become the primary way companies speak to consumers, images are powerful and may contribute to beliefs held by society at large (Dery). In the event of this advertisement and others like it, it makes damaging claims about young girls and their sexuality and imposes an idea that it is acceptable to regard girls as sexual objects.
In my jammed version of this advertisement I changed the company name ‘American Apparel’ to ‘American Exploitation’ to exemplify the companies infamous reputation for exploiting sexuality to sell clothing. I further modified the advertisement to include two short statistics about sexual assault. Because the advertisement utilized a picture of a seemingly underage girl in a vulnerable position I felt it was appropriate to reference sexual assault. Because American Apparel is an American company, I used American statistics.
By turning this advertisement into a public service announcement about childhood sexual assault I hope to demonstrate the absurdity of not just commodifying sexuality, but of sexualizing young girls to the extent this company has. As noted by Jacques Monod, ideas act similarly to biological genes, they reproduce and evolve dependent on selection (Gleick). Selection occurs when we as consumers are fed images like the original American Apparel advertisement, containing not just messages about clothes for sale, but subtle messages about who is sexual, and how they are sexual. These messages are particularly damaging when they depict seemingly high school aged girls in sultry poses. Although I do not wish to suggest that teenage girls shouldn’t embrace their own sexuality, it is not appropriate to produce sexual images of them for the general public to consume. By objectifying this young girl, and others like her, the media is in turn suggesting that teenage girls aren’t just sexual beings, but sexual objects to be looked at and used.
By jamming this advertisement in the way that I have, my hope is to subvert the message that sex sells and that young girls are not just sexual, but the ideal embodiment, of sexuality, and instead point to how ridiculous it is that our society insists on turning women and children into sexual objects that can be used not just for your own enjoyment, but also to sell your product.
Dery, Mark. “Culture Jamming: Hacking, Slashing, and Sniping in the Empire of Signs: A Brief Introduction to the 2010 Reprint.” Mark Dery. Web. June 24 2016.