American apparel designs, creates and prints it’s own advertisements. The company is known for having very provocative ads in which a female model would be photographed wearing a see-through shirt for a top and just her underwear for bottoms. I understand that this is what sells in the retail industry now-days and that advertising companies will do anything to get their product sold, but to what extent will they go? In my quest to find an interesting advertisement to I stumbled upon an ad by American Apparel that features a white model posing in “Black Face”. I’m not sure what their understanding of “Black Face” is, but to my understanding, it is a stereotypical depiction of black people.
The blackface minstrel act was a very popular form of entertainment in 19th-century America. It was also a highly racist depiction of African Americans The model’s face is covered in dark brown make up her lips are extremely exaggerated to resemble that of a black woman’s. It seems to me that American Apparel is trying to promote a new line of hair wraps, so why not just have real black women in their advertisements…seems very strange and unnecessary to me. For more information on “Black Face” follow the link provided.
http://etext.virginia.edu/railton/huckfinn/minstrl.html
--Brendan--
Works Cited
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_26/b3939108_mz017.htm
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