MusicUK

The British agency that regulates advertisements banned American Apparel's "School Days" campaign because "the focus was on [the model's] buttocks and groin rather than on the skirt being modeled," according to a sternly worded reprimand.

The ruling this week marks the sixth time in two-and-a-half years that the Advertising Standards Agency has prohibited an American Apparel ad.

The campaign has the tagline, "Your first assignment is to dress appropriately." One ad features a female model in a plaid miniskirt leaning into the window of a car, shot from below, so the viewer can peek at her underwear. Another shows the model bending over to touch the ground.



Social media users accused American Apparel of peddling "Lolita fantasies." The company does in fact sell Lolita-branded miniskirts and crop tops. The British watchdog agency investigated, and banned the ads after two people filed complaints because they considered the images to be inappropriately sexual.
According to the advertisement regulator's ruling, American Apparel defended the images on the grounds that they hadn't been printed publicly.

The company posted the ads on its website and social media, and claimed that only "consumers who had 'opted in' to see images consistent with their branding" would see them.

American Apparel also protested that the model is 30 years old, but the standards agency noted the ads did not show her face, and presented her as a schoolgirl. The organization ruled that the ads normalized sexually predatory behavior because they presented the model as a schoolgirl, showcased her butt instead of her skirt and imitated an invasive up-skirt photos.

The agency instructed American Apparel to remove the images from its website and social media accounts, and warned them to make sure future ads "contained nothing that was likely to cause serious or widespread offense."

According to the organization's section on sanctions, the bad publicity of a banned ad is an effective sanction.
While this may be true for anti-aging products banned for making false claims, it seems likely that the prohibition will add to American Apparel's risqué brand identity.

American Apparel has no qualms about flaunting the controversy surrounding it; the clothing maker recently posted ads on Billboards in Los Angeles that speak to just that.

"We're not politically correct — But we have good ethics," the billboards read, adding that the company is sweat-shop free.

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