American Apparel's 'Unisex' Ads Portray Men And Women Very Differently

When perusing American Apparel's website for "unisex" wear, you might notice a strange trend.

While men in non-gender-specific shirts are shown modeling the clothing in innocuous poses — looking straight at a camera or smoking a cigarette — the female models all seem to forget their pants.

Swedish blogger Emelie Eriksson is sick of American Apparel's habit of letting male models wear shirts like normal human beings when women are posed almost naked in sexually explicit positions, for the very same clothing item.

Obviously, this is a deliberate ploy by American Apparel, which is known for shock tactics in advertising and regularly getting banned for vulgarity in the UK.

Still, the side-by-side comparison of how the retailer markets identical pieces to the different sexes is jarring. We've collected a few. (Warning: partial nudity ahead.)

Here's how American Apparel sells a unisex flannel shirt to a man.

And here's how the retailer thinks it should look on a woman.

All women wearing the innocuous garb suddenly find themselves incapable of wearing pants.

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