The idea that an image speaks a thousand words has been considered throughout time since it was first observed. But like most imagery it can be interpreted differently by each individual who views it. Therefore a message you might at first perceive to be acceptable advertising, for example, might turn out to have severe back lash if it touches on an inappropriate or offensive topic. Ethical issues must be thought of when creating imagery or media that is portrayed to the public as one wrong image could cost you your reputation or affect many lives in a negative way. You need to consider culture, religion and gender stereotyping to name a few so that you can create a good message for the public, one which will not offend anyone. American apparel is known for their suggestive and provocative advertising however no one really understands what they are trying to sell in these adverts. The advert I have chose to analyse portrays a woman in her early 20’s wearing underwear lying back on a bed pulling her legs back by her tights with them in the air. My initial thoughts I had were that it was a very sexualised image for a clothing brand and I wondered what were they trying to sell through the black and white advent? As there was no clothing visible in the image which stood out or was highlighted. The logo of “American Apparel” is placed on a white banner which covers the woman’s private areas, the wording itself is in black and placed within the banner over her pants to draw the eyes into the most sexual area of the advert. Her legs are cut out and hanging over the banner giving brackets to the company’s name.

To consider the ethical issues within this advert I would say that the company/photographer/creative director are over sexualising the female body and women in general more than they need to. Sex is said to sell, however when thinking about the consequence of the wide spread sexualisation of women (or men) you have to ask yourself is it really worth it? Showing images like this of women to young boys who are at an impressionable age means that they are going to see this as the norm and start to sexualise the girls around them who are too young to be introduced into this type of attention. If you teach boys from a young age that women and girls are there to be perceived in a sexual way it will affect their perception of women throughout their whole lives altering their relationships with women and their views of how women should be treated creating a generation that could end up looking at women as objects rather than people.

When creating a message it must have direction and intention. I don’t want to look at simplistic and inappropriate advertising I want to see interesting and mentally engaging advertising. An ethnically inconsiderate advert can lead to a negative mentality for the people who view it whereas a positive advert with a strong message can change a person for the better “Weak messages create bad situations” and to avoid an ethnically insensitive society we need to consider what messages we project through all of our work, not only advertising.

Book – Shrigley, D.S, (2014) Weak messages create bad situations A manifesto, Canongate