American Apparel has done it again. The Los Angeles-based clothing company released a risqué, sexist mini-skirt ad a few days ago that may trump its racy predecessors. I understand that sex sells, but this new ad is simply not sexy. It’s trashy. It features a close up of a girl’s bent over behind, exposing her undergarments and a good amount of skin back there. I can’t even see what the skirt looks like or how it would fit, unless I planned on walking around on all fours. 

But, you know what? It’s a business, and if people don’t want to look at the ad or buy clothes from American Apparel, they certainly don’t have to.

I get it, CEO Dov Charney approaches advertising by providing a fair amount of shock value, but it works—people are talking about it. Unfortunately in our society, any press is good press. 

And aside from the ads, American Apparel is a fair, socially conscious company. According to its website, an American Apparel garment worker can earn more than $30,000 a year and receive healthcare as well. If you compare that to earning $600 per year as a garment worker in Bangladesh, that’s a pretty good deal. The company proudly says the employees who make the clothes don’t just have jobs, they have careers. 

In addition to that, American Apparel seems to take pride in its fair practices. Here is a statement from its website:

“But at American Apparel we passionately leverage art, design and technology to advance our business process and we are confident we’ll prove that vertical integration is a viable business model that can work even better than the status quo model of continuous outsourcing. It’s not just about made in the USA. More importantly, it is about designing a business that does not, at its fundamental core, rely on the relentless pursuit of low-cost labor to survive. As wages and transportation costs increase worldwide, we believe our business model of vertical integration to be the path of least resistance. For the record, American Apparel supports free and fair trade, and almost half of the company’s 250 stores are outside the USA, allowing the company to export hundreds of millions of dollars of US-made apparel annually.”

The company also concentrates on its carbon footprint and shows support for the GLBT community. If you have seen those “Legalize Gay” T-shirts, which you probably have because they are everywhere, those are a product of American Apparel. The company even released a statement that said, “American Apparel believes that sexuality should be celebrated, not condemned.”

Honestly, if American Apparel’s ads weren’t shocking, I would have never been interested in researching this company further, and I never would have found out about the good things it does that truly deserve praise. 

So, its ads may make people feel uncomfortable and can be trashy and sexist, but that is only one part of the company, and just so happens to be the most prevalent one. But the inside of the company, which is most companies’ ugliest part, is squeaky clean. As a society, we are so obsessed with the appearance of things rather than how they really are, but maybe we should give American Apparel a break—it is doing good things, just behind the scenes. 

Send your thoughts to Taylor at technician-viewpoint@ncsu.edu.