Image analysis: American Apparel

After researching gender stereotypes, sexualisation and sexism within advertisments, I quickly noticed the ones that kept popping up were American Apparel ads; so I decided to research into this a little bit further.
I think these are perfect examples of how woman and their bodies are sexualised within advertisements, and the women themselves are used to entice an audience, rather than the actual clothes being advertised.

some pages from my visual journal

A lot of the adverts include exploitative imagery of women and young women that many people, including the Advetising standards authority deem inappropriate. Many of the ads which were published were subsequently banned shortly after. These are some of the advertisements which were banned: 

this advert was banned because the ASA argued the girl pictures looked under the age of 16, so was counted as the sexualisation of a minor

these two were also banned because of how young both of the models look

this was part of a 'back to school' campaign and was banned as it was deemed as sexualisation of schoolgirls

As controversial as these ads are, I guess american apparel do excel at originality. I think these would be great examples of advertising to use in my essay, and there is probably a million and one things that could be spoken about in regards to them. 

    

   

some crappy drawings from my visual journal

Initial image analysis

POTATOES ADVERT

SCHLITZ BEER ADVERT

BOSCH WASHING MACHINE ADVERT

LYNX ADVERTS

These are a few images I chose to a bit of further analysis on, I have picked ones that stood out the most to me and the ones that had a strong message within them. I think these are strong potentials for the final images I will analyse in my essay.

ST2: Reading and understanding a text

The question I chose was "to what extent does advertising contract our ideas of gender?" and the text I chose was 'Kant on sexuality and objectification' from the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy.

In this piece of text, Kant puts across his views of sexuality exercised outside of a monogamous marriage quite strongly; the tone of voice is quite persuasive and seems like something he is quite passionate about. He thinks that monogamous marriage is the only way two people can practise sexuality without becoming an object. He says it’s “the only relationship in which two people can exercise their sexuality without the fear of reducing themselves to objects.” He explains that he thinks practising sexuality outside of a monogamous marriage is wrong, and that it makes the loved person like an object of appetite, and that “they treat humanity merely as a means for their sexual purposes.” He also explains his views on objectification, which he says is “regarding someone as an object, something for use.” He feels like once a person has been used for sexual desires, they will then be pushed aside and no longer bothered with.  Something else that is mentioned within the text is his view on prostitution and concubinage (a sexual relationship between a man and more than one woman); which he believes objectification is present in and therefore thinks it is unethical and problematic. He says “A person cannot allow others to use her body sexually in exchange for money without loosing her humanity and becoming an object.” With regards to concubinage he believes that there is a huge amount of inequality involved,  as “the woman surrenders her sex completely to the man, but the man does not completely surrender his sex to the woman.