Oh and the fact in the AA ads the viewer always appears to be peeking in on some dirty private moment, strips that female models of any power they could have felt they had ad gives it to us. It DOES make it seem like women don't deserve the same amount of respect as men which is DIRECTLY related to rape instances. Women are objectified, products are sold, c'est la vie.

Demain

That Girl Hates You

angryyoungwoman

I have no problem with women feeling/being sexy. If you or anyone else wants to watch/do porn, as long as it's legal, it's your problem. My problem is with women being denigrated. I just can't sit by and say that that's ok.

angryyoungwoman

yourfriendandneighbor

Catty Is Cumbersome

Catty Is Cumbersome

I have a friend that works at AA who says that is actually Don's current gf.

jessthink

dickieangenson

Beebs

I'm torn. I HATE their ads, think most of their clothes are shitty, but like their shirts and like the fact that they make things in the US and not in sweatshops...

mizzal

It's wrong, I agree, for a woman to knowingly dress in a provocative way when she isn't sexually available. But at the same time, I think some men (namely, assholes) use the argument "she dressed sexy" to excuse lusting after women at inappropriate times. I mean, since when is a woman responsible for the sexual feelings her outfits may or may not provoke? I'm of Indian origin, and I remember one time, when I was in India, a prominent politician penned an editorial saying "when girls in this country go around in provocative jeans and tops instead of traditional dress, can they really blame others if they get raped?"

My point: whether an outfit suggests sexual availability is subjective. Women sometimes suffer from that subjectivity, and we should support each other's decisions to wear whatever we want, whenever.

AnikaG

empress151

Rachelattack

Does the graffiti end in a question mark? I can't tell. If so, then it wouldn't be correct punctuation. You're not really posing a question, you're just stating your thoughts.

Vilgrom

I suppose then, every hip-hop video you see with "video hos" and every playboy magazine out there also condones rape?..

Nothing in my view can make rape more"acceptable" as someone on here said. Not the sluttiest pose in the world. A woman has a right to wear what she desires, and pose whichever way she likes. That does not grant anyone permission to rape her. Bottom line.

While those ads are indeed gross and annoy the hell out of me--the only people in whom they would inspire thoughts of rape are degenerates and social psychopaths. In fact, most women who get raped are modestly dressed.

So it's disturbing to me that so many people on here are approving of that graffiti statement. Like it was some intellectual, well-thought-out slogan. C'mon. Whoever wrote that is the reason women get raped. It's attitudes like his that get women raped. It's because people still believe that if a woman decides to parade around in tights and sticks her butt out, she sending an invitation to get raped. Give me a break.

I believe the exploitation of women needs to stop. Ads like these need to stop. They demean women. But more importantly, it's the ATTITUDES of people around the world that need to be adjusted. It's a world-wide thing. Women are getting raped on a mass scale in parts of the world, where men have no access to pornography or American Apparel ads. There is no media influence or subliminal messages propelling men to rape. It's the simple ingrained belief that women are the seductresses, the weaker meeker sex, and that men have the right to do with them what they please.

So we need to start changing those attitudes. Women have a right to flaunt their sexuality. Look at Wendy O. Williams, the punk singer. She performed in "skimpy" outfits, but it was her way of reclaimed her sexuality. Her way of owning it. This is a debate that could go on forever. But the bottom line is, a woman never ever deserves to be raped, no matter how provocatively she's dressed, or how many nasty ads are out there influencing people.

jguera

The main difference? Whether she has a face and personality or if she's just an orifice. This is Highlights-easy, folks.

Showing a woman in underwear who looks straight-into-your-eyes confident is a LOT difference than showing a woman bent over, offering her ass to you, her face pressed against a wall.

gluecake

lostinthewoods

aristotrash

angryyoungwoman

Pubeinmysoup

SilverJacket

SilverJacket

SilverJacket

Molly Lambert

Astroblack

lisaraine

gretl

royal72

arby

That's all I can come up with; I'm still wrestling with whether the graffitist was gender-conscious or a violent misogynist asshole lurking and waiting to act.

I think it's pretty disconcerting that the image is sufficiently "blank" that the graffiti can be read either way. The model is a person. Damn.

Rooo sez BISH PLZ

It's quite possible that all this pressure from advertisers to make us "sexy no matter what" is leading to harrassment because men are being brainwashed into thinking that's what we aim for as long as we make any effort with our appearances.

Tulipsaki

I've boycotted American Apparel ever since I first saw their ads, both because I consider the ads degrading/misogynistic and because the head is a sleazeball. I'm not about to put money in his pocket.

arby

Okay, you guys want to REALLY hate me? There's an AA shop in Cambridge, MA, where I live, and I actually went in this summer to complain that there was a poster of a woman's ass (which was probably wearing a thong that AA was selling ... but who could see the thong with that giant ass wagging in my fucking face?) facing the sidewalk at stroller level. The saleswoman said she'd tell her manager how I felt ... then she turned around and took off her top and bent over for me. I guess that's part of the AA job description.

Anyhell, the only thing that will stop these ads is if (a) young women refuse to pose for them (not bloody likely: from my almost-middle-aged perch, young women seem more obsessed than ever in making peenies of men they don't know hard. It's like Gloria Steinem never happened)(fun fact: Glo Steinem is actor Christian Bale's stepmom) or (b) there are more graffiti attacks. I'm stranded here in Cambridge, doing the mom thing and such, but NYC feminazis: I'm counting on you.

ginger rant

are we still talking about this? why?

lola7

ShansyPants

nothanks

nothanks

So where's the real outrage? The ad campaigns, or at the attitudes around the world towards womens' expression of their sexuality. I would say the latter.

While I do agree that this campaign exploits, demeans and objectifies women--the grafitti writing on that billboard is what's really scary. Women, after all, have a right to wear tights. And for all we know, the woman in the picture is in her living room, feeling sexy.

jguera

k.leigh.8

nacho_supreme

I also walked past you interviewing people about it and wondered what on earth was going on. fun times.

iodine

Puh-lease ...

david.c

social_crimer

GinaLouise

mrsdoubtfire

But that image of a woman is not what feeds male violence against women, which happens with greater frequency the greater amount of male dominance is exuded in the culture. (Which incidentally, tends to coincide with the concept of "covering women up".)

Rape and other forms of violence against women occur because of a cultural acceptance of male entitlement. When feeling entitled to "things" - which include people - and lacking said "things", select men will blame the "thing" (people who can be things) standing nearest them.

So random social commenting graffiti sprayer, don't blame sexualizing ads for violence against women. Look more to ads that speak to male sense of entitlement which promise them that if they just can afford the right watch, the right car, the right overpriced suit, etc, then they are, indeed, Alpha Males who can be denied nothing.

The guys who can't afford such things are the ones who get real annoyed when the "things" they can afford - whatever hapless woman cares to be around them - don't recognize their entitled status.

Mean_Ol_Liberal

Also, too? A friend of mine went on a tour of the LA factory and said it was a sweatshop.

TiaMaria

CHOCOLATECOFFEEBEANS

franceshasbeen

ForeverBlueGirl

It probably was a social commentary about the sexual objectification of woman.

In, say, Jamaca Queens it would have been critical of the woman.

Galls

Two, what made the ad offensive was what was spray painted on the ad It is offensive in that it suggests that women who dress provocatively get raped. All kinds of women are victims, not skinny ones, half-naked ones or anything. There is no "kind" of person that this happens to, and it is never the woman's fault. In psychology it is called the 'just world hypotheses', the belief that bad things only happen to bad people and this is most often applied to the logic that if a woman is raped, that woman must have been bad and must have "asked for it."

Three, I saw that a lot of people who saw (shown in the video) felt slightly ambivalent toward it, as if they were only responding to the message spray painted, now the original ad itself. In this manner, are people too desensitized to provocative advertisement? I saw the picture of the ad before seeing the spray painted message and I know I felt uncomfortable with the ad itself. The message made it worse, and incited a different reaction than the picture did.

Bottom line, rape exists because there are horrible eople in the world. That is it. It's not because anyone asked for it, not because anyone dressed a certain way. It's simply because there is evil.

UpsetPanda

Also, am tired of T&A advertisements where they're not even trying to personify the model anymore. She's not a woman, she's a vagina/ass/boobcarrier.

warmaiden

Uhh, does this apply to ladies? Because my ring finger is longer.

mocksun

blueberrypancake

Miss Smith Drank Your Vodka

TWSS

adrock75

Though at the same time, this is more than just an ad, it's documentation of a weird, cultish, sexualized work environment--so in that sense it is getting a little weird.

Hmm, it's just cotton, right?

Steverino

Miss Smith Drank Your Vodka

99centbar

treecut...will cut a beech

so5minutesago

One, men are more visually inclined than women in terms of sexuality. Women don't operate under sexual blindness, but men respond more to visual stimulation. Here's some random BBC article on an example of this:[news.bbc.co.uk]

Two, even if women wanted to rape men in response to an ad or sexual image, there's less threat of their actually acting on the impulse and succeeding. Men, especially young men, can be dangerously impulsive, in sex, drinking, driving, fighting, etc. . .

Namennayo

mandarin

I found the ads interesting at fist because they at least told you who the model was and her relation to the company, where now it's just the objective image. The only thing AA does right is T-Shirts.

Cheap Shot

It was split into 2 parts, and in the second part a Jewish family (with very annoying kids & a self-absorbed, entitled mom) gets gassed by the Latina maid, right?

The whole movie disturbing.

petuniacat

rubyruby

Trampoline

That ad really, REALLY pissed me off. UGH.

marie123

jewess

LBB

Cam/ron

Plus, my friend who works for a porn company and wrote a thesis on pornographic images is actually offended by their ads. It takes a lot to offend someone who spends that much time around hyper-sexualized images of women.

joyjoyjoy

that said, i think a lot of the ambiguity discussed here can be sorted out somewhat easily if we all can agree on certain essentials:

1) the plain fact that several people have brought up that rape is a violent crime. though the sexual organs are involved, it is not a "sexual" act. it is violence and submission via the sexual organs. it is particularly visceral and psychologically imperious because it employs the sexual organs, the part of the body that owns the primal drive to survive and reproduce. when a man rapes a woman or another man (and let's be honest, it happens all the time in prison or otherwise), he wants to overcome some perceived or intuited shortcoming by attempting to own the sexuality of the victim. it is a crime of violence, of battery, of assault, of dominance, and theft.

2) rape pre-exists advertising and media, and therefore cannot be assigned to those things causally. rape does not follow from titillation, but rather from what i mentioned above: a need to dominate and take. it's covetous, not simply from being stimulated.

if we can aver that these two things are true, then we can keep the AA ads in their proper place. the cynical use of sexuality and provocation to move merchandise. no more and no less.

supastah

StuckInThe215

gwai lo

It's akin to the difference between seeing "WWJD" on a person's bracelet or website, and say, those black and white billboards signed, "God." One is aggressive, the other, not so much.

Namennayo

Sorry.

Trampoline

BLK GRL

Just more tedious and preachy. And a lot more embarrassing for people who think they're coming up with something groundbreaking by asking passersby whether men believe sexy women deserve rape or women who believe they deserve rape dress sexy.

Men: don't rape.
Women: wear what feels good.
Jersey Girl in the Meat-Packing District: a mini-dress with a navel-revealing neckline and 6" fuck-me pumps do not feel good when it's 50 degrees out and the streets are cobblestone. You're not fooling anyone.

Trampoline

lisaraine

BLK GRL

BLK GRL

mightymouth

misscrotchety

Bigggnasty

I wasn't aware of any sexual harassment allegations against Dov or anyone else there but I haven't really been paying attention. If it's true, then it's awful and hopefully a one or two well-placed civil actions will shake things up and make it stop.

Admittedly, Dov's a creepy mo-fo but, geez, have you seen pictures of Exxon-Mobil's CEO? I don't know if the position attracts or makes the creeps...

leftistcoast

wednesdaywolf

tstrizz

Trampoline

mightymouth

Namennayo

But It's hard for me to divorce the branding of a product with it's actual quality. For example, Victoria Secret has good bras, I haven't been able to find better, but I honestly hate going in there because of it's monolithic idea of sexiness. American Apparel could sell itself because it has decent products, soft and flattering, but they they still resort to using unnecessarily sexist images. They're one brand that could let their products sell themselves, but they have to aspire of this idiotic hipster aura of ironic sexism.

popularheresy

flowergirl

Then again, many men do find that sexy. Which is precisely the problem. If only the focus were on prevention...

misscrotchety

Namennayo

I've never been to one, but a friend of mine went to one, not knowing what it was. He got an education of sorts.

petuniacat

I don't think the graffiti is social commentary, at all. The implication of it is that men who see sexy women on billboards will be moved to go out and rape. Definitely not a woman-friendly message.

edgyspice

But in all seriousness, I think the 3rd Wave points out pretty clearly that sexuality can - and should - be owned by all. Not just men.

I'm not going to get into arguing about these ads, because I think they intentionally straddle both sides of the line. (Or weave back and forth. Or something.) But I do think that "sexiness is a sort of tyranny against women" is a pretty bold -- ok, ridiculously broad -- statement. God knows there are women who enjoy sexiness (of all kinds) as much as men, and to simply be sexy from time to time does not inherently degrade them.

I understand the argument about degradation / debasement, and I am certainly no fan of Dov Charney. And, while I see how certain ideas and projections of sexuality (like the example shown above) can bolster implicit societal anti-feminism, I feel compelled to point out that sexiness really isn't a tyranny against women.

Trampoline

BiscuitDoughJones

what's wrong with the ad exactly?

hypnotic

I'm sure what the ad means, though. AA = sexy = frail woman in a prone position either staggering, vomiting, or inviting someone (the general public?) to engage in sex with her.

The ad is base and irresponsible, and it doesn't belong on a billboard outdoors. We see crap like this all the time, usually in magazines that people buy and willingly look through. This crap assaults your senses, and you have no choice.

Namennayo

And I have such mixed feelings about AA. I HATE their advertising with a passion but their v-neck tees and basic tank-tops and whatnot fit me better than any other brand; before American Apparel I had no go-to brand I could count on for those necessities. And all those colors!

tstrizz

joyjoyjoy

Excuse my French, but if American Apparel (the brand) had a voice, isn't that what he would say? He'd probably also say, when asked by a court of law, "She was asking for it."

Social commentary by way of sad, sad sarcasm.

misscrotchety

pferde_schwanz

Rape is not about sex. It is about violence.

There is no legitimate social commentary in writing that line, and I'd wonder about the mentality of the jerk who tries to use sexualize imagery as a rationalization for a violent act. Is he saying that just because he gets aroused, he has every right to violate a woman? He's ignorant. (And my guess as well, he's probably bitter because he can't get laid. That is the only place where the sexualization intersects with what he's saying).

GothamTomato

sumac

That is in no way an indictment against either school. It mearly points to Dov's level of access. He isn't some poor boy who worked his way through school and is now "giving back" to the community. He knows how to play the game and make sure all the bucks stay in his wallet.

lfw1031

boop

Trampoline

nycheartbreaker

BEDTIMEFORBONZETTE

She went and got herself raped.

Leiakat

Skinny Bone Jones

SOhp101

lfw1031

And that ad above is just stupid. Doesn't mean it's an excuse for women to be raped or that it should be excused. But there's something to be said for the ridiculous levels of sexualization of women. I mean, it's fucking rigoddamndiculous.

SinisterRouge

pferde_schwanz

I don't really agree with the sentiment, as my understanding of rape is that it is less sexually motivated (even if the sexual urge is to dominate), and more motivated by an urge of violence and agression against the woman. Still, it offends me less than if the author were blaming the model for her pose, and thus women in general for being the victims of rape.

texylady

SirCharge

petuniacat

99centbar

BiscuitDoughJones

joyjoyjoy

petuniacat

so5minutesago

Pope John Peeps II

olivia2.0

Ceiling Cat

I would say that images like this ad, plastered up larger-than-life throughout the city, continue to present women as nothing more than sex symbols. And that doesn't do anything positive for our overall culture.

I mean, this billboard is practically primal-- just an ass and legs, no depiction of a facial expression or anything. I don't know if it's right that the graffiti specified "rape" as being a direct result of a culture that allows images like this-- I see it more just as "I wonder why women can't get away from being objectified in real life."

Okay, I get that it's media/advertising, and she's a model, and they're just trying to sell leggings, and it's not real... but when the image is larger than life and with you right there on the city street, it's going to have spillover effects in how people interact with each other and how they feel, especially in that moment when you see it. Whether it makes you feel insecure, or uncomfortable, or sexually aroused-- you can't ignore it, and I think it's inapprop for a public space.

Gah I don't know.

AnnaBanana

so5minutesago

KnitSandwich

BLK GRL

Mediahohoho

tallyhoe

fancy_nancy

Thank you. Sensitive subject for me.

jakesprincess

And then I wonder "Who are these girls in these cheap ads?" and "I hope they got paid well and didn't model in exchange for American Apparel product."

echoparkgal

PetiteDemoiselleRouge

h_a_l

I always get this sort of funky-dirty-moldy smell from the American Apparel ads. I hardly ever think they "make the average women look beautiful." Generally, Dov finds sexy gals and sexes them up.

They were already beautiful to begin with. Except now, in Dov's hands, they have a wee bit of stink to 'em. Sort of like the ver