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