Is anybody else just fucking creeped out by the American Apparel “Meet Melissa” ads? I’ve seen them a lot on the Onion and a few times on IndieClick affiliates, I’m not sure where else. The ad is a picture of a pretty girl with dark hair in a white t-shirt, smiling under a badly lit shower and looking kind of nervous. The ad has a rollover sidebar. Expanded, it reads:<\/p>\n
“Meet Melissa.<\/b> She won an unofficial wet T-shirt contest held at the American Apparel apartment in Montreal. Her prize for winning was a travel mug from McGill University, and the satisfaction of a job well done.<\/p>\n
Melissa is wearing our new ultralight Sheer Jersey T-Shirt, AKA “The Summer Shirt,”<\/b> available at our stores and online.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Let’s translate that.<\/p>\n
“Meet Melissa No Last Name.<\/b> We had a party at a company apartment, then piled on the peer pressure and alcohol until we got some girls to pose under a shower. We thought this one was hot, so we’re going to put her face and upper chest on a few billion pageviews. We didn’t pay her shit!<\/p>\n
We’re reasonably sure Melissa’s over 18, but hey, no last name and no pay means no paper trail, right?<\/b> P.S. Go to our site and you don’t even have to look at her face, just her hands over her breasts splashed real big on the front page.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
For a company that’s trying to build a rep as progressive (“Sweatshop Free, Brand Free Clothes”<\/a>), they sure come off like fratboy assholes there.<\/p>\n
Update 1453<\/b> hrs: Ashleigh<\/a> linked me to an enlightening Business Week article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Is anybody else just fucking creeped out by the American Apparel “Meet Melissa” ads? I’ve seen them a lot on the Onion and a few times on IndieClick affiliates, I’m not sure where else. The ad is a picture of a pretty girl with dark hair in a white t-shirt, smiling under a badly lit […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}