American [SEX] Apparel?

Is it wrong of me to be slightly disturbed by the current American Apparel advertising campaign?

Let me explain: American Apparel takes out ads on the back page of the San Francisco free weekly papers. Maybe they have ads in the newspapers in your town too. Perhaps these ads appear in print elsewhere, but I’ve only seen them in the local papers. Each ad features someone who, according to the copy under the photo, works for the American Apparel company. Not a model. An employee.

Most of the ads I’ve seen show female employees, with a disproportionate amount of women of color. And every time, the woman is scantily clad, at best. This week’s paper shows an Asian-American woman, wearing only a thong, doing a push-up on a bed. The copy reads, “Kyung, 22, works at our Westwood store.”

I got this picture (right) from the American Apparel website. According to the caption, it shows an American Apparel employee. She’s in her red and white panties. Does she wear these to the office, with no pants or skirt on? This picture is one of the more tame of the bunch, although, on the site itself, you can click on her pic to see others from the same photo shoot, including ones of her on a bed, ones of her with her legs spread, etc.

So, it’s salacious. There’s no question about that. The women are beautiful and sexy, and have all the right in the world to show that sexiness to the world. Let me be clear: I am ANTI censorship, and PRO sex-positive feminism. I am completely in favor of sex worker rights, including the right to be part of the creation of erotic imagery. (And, in my opinion, these images are erotic.)

But these women are not necessarily your typical sex workers, or even sex workers at all. They work in the stores and offices of a clothing company. How does that work? How does that sit with the employees who don’t model for the ads? How does it so happen that there are so many hot, sexy women (and especially women of color) working for this company, and that they all seem happy to pose in various states of undress? Who doesn’t get hired? And why do the words “sexual harassment” and “racist sexism” come to mind?

Readers, you tell me: am I being sex-negative? What’s going on here?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 7th, 2005 at 9:22 pm and is filed under Culture & Media, Sex Workers' Rights, Uncategorized, Women . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.