Debauchette says

Since I’m pressed for time and since American Apparel’s sexy sexed-up ads are a revived topic of conversation here and elsewhere, I’m going to leave you with my favorite AA ad, which can be found on the back of S Magazine

Read the quote, and see the no-safer-for-work-than-many-glamour-ads ad itself here.

The AA ad, if you’re not inclined to visit the link, shows a Photoshop-skinny woman in only a pair of gray men’s “y-front” underwear lying between the legs of an equally slender but hairy-legged man. She’s looking up at the camera while, it looks like, pulling aside his pair of gray men’s “y-front” underwear before giving him a lick.

I’m inclined to agree with Debauchette that one walks into a bit of a trap for objecting to this specific ad, because unless one objects to the whole principle of glamour/fashion ads, one’s argument must be that the implied sexualization of commodities isn’t supposed to be so overt.

It’s prudish libertine maxim that using sex to sell anything is problematic on multiple levels ranging from basic insecurity about one’s own products to perpetuating karl-marx-style alienation of sex away from its-self-for-itself and towards sex a medium of exchange.

If you’re not willing to condemn all such ads then you’re sort of obliged to admit that’s a good one.

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We’ll leave for another day everything else one could unpack from such an ad for not-even-white-whitie-tightie men’s briefs!

Update: In case anyone wonders my pale endorsement of AAs ads are not an endorsement of the owner’s, um, evidently disgraceful workplace conduct, nor of his discreditable defenses. The closest to that I’d come would be to say that he appears to practice what his industry preaches.