This is an advertisement of American Apparel Unisex Baby Rib Briefs. As you can see, there are two people in the picture, one is a man and the other is a woman. However, they both wearing the same underwear, and the girl is wearing a nude bra that makes their upper body also look similar. From my point of view, this advertisement subverts the traditional gender norms and blur the difference of two genders. This advertisement is clean and simple, what catches people’s eyes the most is these underwears in bright pink color. Pink is usually referred to female, however, this advertisement shows that not only can women wearing pink but also men. Besides, as an underwear advertisement, the male model has a slim body instead of the exaggerated masculine body shape, and the female model does not portrayed a lot of femaleness such as plump chest, which are the elements that usually appear in ordinary underwear advertisement in order to reinforce the traditional gender forms. Susan Kaiser once wrote, ‘The larger finalist goal is to deconstruct the subject-object binary or power hierarchy altogether: to break down either’er oppositions and to enable subjectivity on the part of all genders and other, intersection subject positions.” From my perspective, this advertisement breaks down the gender oppositions by making the two models in different gender wearing the same underwears and hide their biological gender differences. It is interesting and unique as underwear is usually be designed to emphasize the gender features.
