Buy or Boycott?

I, for one, can't quite decide. We see images every day of airbrushed, photoshopped models placed in the most sexual of positions—remember Dolce & Gabbana’s “gang rape” ad? And thanks to technology, models are nothing more than objects to be shaped and molded by marketers, fashion editors and photographers. Moles and acne are erased, eyes enlarged, ears trimmed, hairlines filled, teeth straightened and necks and waists lengthened and stretched. "We're always stretching the models' legs and slimming their thighs," a Manhattan photo retoucher recently told NEWSWEEK. And in some cases hands, feet and even legs are replaced when a subject's parts don't add up to a perfect whole.

So why then am I so offended when I see real-looking women who choose to display themselves for American Apparel—the rare company that doesn't airbrush, manipulate or otherwise alter the photos in their ads? Shouldn't I view them as brave, sexual, confident? Refreshing, even? Hall, of Adrants, says it's easier to detach ourselves from more mainstream fashion images that are so overproduced "they're almost fake … It's like you don't even believe there's an actual person involved in the creation of the ad." With American Apparel "that's like some girl that could live next door to you."

Former porn star turned Ph.D. sexologist Annie Sprinkle says American Apparel's promotions tap into American culture's contradictory views about sex. "They can be fun, sexy and positive," Sprinkle says, or they can be a turnoff—depicted as dirty and ugly. "But that's why it's a great ad campaign," she says. "As a feminist, I like the ads and I like the graffiti [the New York billboard was defaced with]. It makes us think about how we view sexuality."

How we view sexuality has certainly changed: we're no longer living in the days of free love, yet we're bombarded by sexualized images just about everywhere. And younger Americans who've grown up in a MySpace world aren't shy about sharing our own most intimate secrets … with everyone who has an Internet connection. It turns out the photo in the controversial American Apparel billboard in Manhattan was a self-portrait shot by the model herself, 24-year-old Kyung Chung, an amateur photographer living in Paris. "The fact that some people chose to project 'victim' onto that image—an image that I took of myself—is only an indication of their own distorted perceptions about women and sexuality," she tells NEWSWEEK. Ah, beauty … or exploitation: it's in the eye of the beholder.

© 2007