Once American Apparel was seen as the new Gap, but its controversial ad campaigns hint at something less wholesome. Plus, why your cups overfloweth
I don't buy leggings. My thighs overfill them, and they look silly with socks, so no, I don't buy leggings, and I don't buy hoodies, and certainly not hotpants, hoiked up like a thong above the double smile of an untanned arse. But despite their being aimed at someone else, American Apparel's adverts, their bleachy scenes of pre-sex and thigh socks, have an impact on me.
The best thing about American Apparel, I've come to realise, is the debates that arise from each of its campaigns. For every new advert you'll find an online conversation around issues rarely argued anywhere else. American Apparel ads feature girls bent over, typically. They're stark and Polaroid-y, reminiscent of a Readers' Wives spread, but shot through a hangover, in the back room of a trainer shop, on someone's long cigarette break.
The latest ads, a series of three women (the first a ballerina in pale-pink underwear reaching skyward to reveal stubbly armpits, the second topless in shades painting her nails, the third knickerless, swinging from a tree in long socks and a shirt), this week prompted the Mail to ask: "Has American Apparel gone too far with 'creepy' controversial new campaign?" A recent American Apparel advert in French fashion magazine Purple shows a girl reclining in a cable knit sweater and white lace knickers ? her pubic hair is the focal point of the photo. Copyranter asks if this is the brand's "sleaziest ad ever", ignoring perhaps the 2009 campaign banned by the Advertising Standards Authority: the 23-year-old model (who, over six images, removes her unisex Flex Fleece zip hoodie) seemed "young and vulnerable and [the ad] could be seen to sexualise a child".
Once American Apparel positioned itself as the new Gap ? anti-trends, ethical, gently alternative. Its ads reflected this, un-Photoshopped, with simple clothes modelled by employees. But at some point it changed. Its ads became sexier. The women in them wore fewer clothes and bent over further, their bodies were cut up into bite-sized portions, their expressions became blanker.
Designed to outrage, the ads led to furious defacings: in 2007 one on a giant billboard in New York was sprayed with the sentence: "Gee, I wonder why women get raped." They led to discussions about sex and ethics, to commentary about body hair, so rarely seen on models, here used by the brand to provoke ? the stubbly armpit, the pubic hair signifying something shocking. They led to analysis of why American Apparel's idea of "natural" is so often read as disturbingly childlike; the company prides itself on enforcing a strict minimal-make-up and unplucked-brow rule on its employees and models, a rule which doesn't, to me, speak of comfort or beauty, but instead hints at an uncomfortable balance of power. "Girls" are bare-faced in this world; "women" wear make-up.
When a 23-year-old woman, unzipping her top, is forbidden to wear cosmetics by her male boss (Dov Charney, the snickering subject of reams of sexual harassment lawsuits) she appears amateur and unprepared ? looking at the ad, we feel like we're spying. I welcome the debates; the brand less so.
AHEAD OF THE CURVE
This week, the world's first L cup bra is being sold. L for "lots of breast", I think. It's big. To put that in context, if you wore it as a hat, you'd need a head the size of Wales, or, if you're being "maths-y", the size of three heads. In 2007 Marks & Spencer introduced the J cup, and two years ago the KK was invented. But does this really mean, as reports have it, that women's boobs are getting bigger? I used to work in the posh tit-pant shop Agent Provocateur, where, in my long dull days of lace and lilies, I learned that women always like to think up their cup size ? choosing the smaller number results in needing a bigger letter, with, say, a 34D doing a similar job to a 36C. Could it be that, rather than finding a bra that fits the breast, we seek to fill the bra we buy?
Email Eva at e.wiseman@observer.co.uk or visit guardian.co.uk/profile/evawiseman for all her articles in one place
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/jan/30/american-apparel-adverts-bra-cup
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