Analysis Of American Apparel

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American Apparel Clothing manufacturer American Apparel has a long notorious history for pushing the limits with their 'risqué ad campaigns. Their advertisements has been condemned sexual exploiting women and essentially using pornography to sell its clothes. American Apparel has become one the most pornographic advertisers of all time. Buyology: Influence on Customer Perception “Fashion is art in most cases and not just about practicality. Nudity or revealing cuts are a part of artistic expression within fashion.”- Maligma “Selling sex is illegal, but using it to promote economic growth is not.” (Sexualization and Sexploitation of Women in the Media; Rosery Films) What actually happened to our culture, people wondered? Has advertising gone too far? And are we being corrupted by sex? According Sex in advertising: Perspectives on the Erotic Appeal, in 2005, approximately one-fifth of all advertising used overt sexual content to sell its product. Society’s interest with sex and the advertising designer’s acceptance of it as an effective tool have served each other for the course of the twentieth century. And has always been separated on the extents to which sexuality can and should be used to sell. Advertising has become the single largest source of visual imagery in our social society. No matter where we look, we see advertisements trying to sell us things. Provocative advertising has been characterized as a deliberate attempt to gain attention through shock. (De Pelsmacker & Van Den Bergh, 1996) In 2007, The American Psychological Association sent out a press release to the media stressing the harmful effects of sexualizing our youth: “The proliferation of sexualized images of girls and young women in advertising, merchandisin... ... middle of paper ... ...n credit cards with men’s names. What is even more important is the reach of porn’s influence. The emerging generation that has grown up in the Internet age and most likely porn has been this generation’s first sexual experience. In most cases the habit sticks, about 70% of 18-24-year-olds visit porn sites each month. Porn has both massive ubiquity and ease of access; the average age when hardcore porn is first viewed is now only eight years old (Viewpoint , 2012). Children are necessarily looking for it but, these images and videos are shared on phones, advertise in magazines and found by innocent Googling. With porn so omnipresent and sex education budgets being slashed across Europe and the United States, porn has become de faco sex education (Viewpoint , 2012). As a result, a whole generation of kids is growing up with a distorted impression of human sexuality.

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