Ethical issues in fashion advertising has always been a huge concern. American apparel is one of the famous brands which is known for its extreme advertisement.

From the picture above, we can see that in this advertisement there is a young lady opened her legs towards to the audience in the setting of her own bedroom. Although there is a white block in the middle to cover the model’s private part, audience could still imagine that the young lady is showing her private part toward us. Clearly, the brand has an ethical issue of sexualizing women through this image. And I don’t really understand why are they trying to create the brand’s image above. It is disgusting to set up the advert in public where children and young generations can see it.

In my point of view, this picture isn’t an advertisement to me. Although she is wearing the tights, it is still not representing any advertisement to me. This image does not lead me to buy those tights which the model is wearing. As the whole image is more like a pornographic. And it doesn’t seem like they are targeting the right audience to advertise. As a young woman which is in their target customer, I would not like to buy clothes from this shop, as from the advertisement I feel like this shop is for sex lover or sex worker.

Also, from the image we can see that the model’s facial expression is serious. It might make people feel she is not happy about opening her lags and might be forced to do it. And this is another ethical issues needs to be concern from this advert. We would not know if the model has been forced to take the picture whether she is willing to do it. She might not be happy to do the job but only because she wants the money or other reasons. And this link to a sense of showing a message of women are not being protected.

However, Marsha Brady, one of American Apparel’s creative directors says: “[when]…there’s a group of people attempting to shame female creativity, female beauty, female pride under the auspices of protecting women, it’s really, really scary.” What Marsha meant is that people are viewing their advert in a wrong way.

Truly, this advert can be view in a different way, such as showing support to feminist.

As we can see from the picture that the model is pulling down her tights by herself. Which refers to women have a choice of showing off themselves, showing off their beauty. And the serious looking of the model may stand for the unbreakable faith of supporting feminist.

But I still do not agree American apparel to use such an extrema advertisement. The reason is they can’t assume that the audience are viewing the advert in the way that how they view. I believe there must be another better way to spread out the message as well as the brand.

Brugnoli-Ensin, Mia. “American Apparel: Sexist Or Liberating?.” Her Campus. N.p., 2017. Web. 29 Nov. 2017.