Racecar Brown: American Apparel Porn Stars, or Why I Defended Kanye West

American Apparel has porn stars in their Internet ads now.

I don't know if you've noticed this, but its true. Notably the above pictured Sasha Grey, who made headlines when Steven Soderbergh, a rather high profile director, pegged her to play the lead in his film The Girlfriend Effect. Either way, poking around the Internet and seeing these American Apparel ads with porn stars is distracting, in a kind of "It's really weird seeing you with clothes on" sort of way.

Not that girls wear much clothing in American Apparel ads. They're kind of famous for being provocative to the point of perversion. Dov Charney, the founder of the clothing line, has had several sexual harassment suits brought against him; he is kind of a notorious pervert. It makes sense for him to put porn stars in his ads, since he seems like the type of dude who looks at a lot of porn. Just look at him, fer chrissakes.

Another thing American Apparel is doing right now is holding a competition searching for the "Best Bottom in the World", as the - ahem - "face" of their continuing underwear lines. In this competition, wearers of American Apparel undergarments take pictures of their own asses, submit them for the competition, and then have their asses rated by Internet goers.

As a public service, here is the current American Apparel #1 Ass:

I stumbled upon a debate about the existence of this competition on a message board that I frequent, where words such as "perverted" and "disgusting" and "demeaning" were being thrown around by, um, guys. Whereas a lot of the girls involved in the conversation were saying "Hmm, I wonder what my ass would score?"

My stunningly intelligent contribution to the conversation was: "OMG I AM A GUY AND AM ATTRACTED TO NAKED WOMENZ GUYZ I AM A PERV>"

The point I was trying to make is that if these women do not feel objectified by the competition, then why should we as men try to make it seem as if we do not like seeing attractive girl asses? It seemed silly to me to deny our sexual nature, something that is such an animal instinct in people.

But the whole nature of the sexes and sex is a whole other fucking blog post.

The reply I got from one person was: "It's not that it's perverted to think those pics are hot. It's pervy for AA to be running that contest. Remember the context: you're not on maxim.com, you're at the website of a clothing store."

This point of view has always been intriguingly difficult for me to understand and, after thinking about it for a good long while, I've come to the conclusion that I simply don't understand it.

Essentially, the argument comes down to content versus forum. By that I mean that this person was not taking offense with any actual content; he was fine with the sexxxy ladeez pictures. His problem was the forum, American Apparel's website.

Which is an argument that I've struggled with. A lot of people feel this way, and for me it's a concept that has never crossed my mind. The forum for the content has never mattered to me. What has mattered to me is the content itself.

In the American Apparel example, it is statistically way easier for a kid to end up seeing girl ass through porn on the Internet than it is for him to find it via American Apparel's Best Bottom in the World competition. And, regardless, if you feel like the content itself isn't pervy, how does it become pervy by it surroundings? Is it like perversion through osmosis?

Either the content offends you or the content doesn't offend you. Trying to say that the content only offends you in certain contexts is like trying to have your cake and eat it, too. I've often been reprimanded by people in my life for using uncouth words too often, and in public places. However, these same people often join in on it when in private. To me, it's illogical. Isn't it the content that is important, as opposed to the forum?

Which brings us obtusely to Kanye West.

I feel like it's been maybe a long enough time for this subject to have died down, for cooler heads to have prevailed. I'll say this, I spoke quickly and irrationally immediately after the Kanye West/Taylor Swift debacle at the MTV VMA Awards. Shortly after it happened I posted the following Facebook status:

"Fuck the haters. Kanye spoke his mind and props to him for having the balls to always do so."

There was a general outpouring against my position, of course. Over the passing time, I've come to better articulate my feelings on the matter. It wasn't so much that I was happy that Kanye West "spoke his mind," as I said. I accept now (though in my haste to rush to West's defense, I didn't then) that what Kanye said was hurtful.

But what is remarkable to me in the aftermath, now just as much as then, is how people didn't disagree with what Kanye said. They did not disagree with the content of his speech. For the most part, people agreed with his actual content - something important to consider. What they were bothered by, however, was the forum. They were angry not for what he said, but rather the context within which he said it.

You can find a lot of evidence of this. There were tweets going around to the tune of "You know, Beyonce's video was better than Taylor's, but Kanye should have just put that on his blog or something, not done it on stage."

To me, the idea of forum over content is fascinating, because it suggests we as a society are more concerned with public decorum than actually, you know, being mean. We want people to put on a public face that does not hurt anyone else, but then allow them to say terrible things in their own means of expression and say, "Well that's free speech."

I would accept being upset about what Kanye actually said. I would even accept being upset about what he actually said AND the context he had said it in. But to say you agree with what he said, but disagre with the form smacks of subtle hypocrisy-- Say mean things, but don't say them to people's face. We would rather you be dishonest than hurt someone else.

Kanye West believed Beyonce had a better music video. We agree, but we'd rather he say it in a way that didn't ruffle the feathers of anyone else involved.

Dov Charney likes to encourage girls to show their asses. We like it, too, but we'd rather he do it on a website that doesn't market to a younger audience.

I like to say controversial things and play Devil's advocate. Others like it, too, but they'd rather I not do it in a time or place that might upset anyone.

But people are going to be upset, young people are going to look at porn, and someone is going to let Taylor Swift know to her face that her music video was basically the movie She's All That.