No, American Apparel did not post a 'back to school' upskirt photo

American Apparel is in the midst of another social media storm after some websites carried quotes that it was "resorting to underage porn" to sell clothes.

The fashion firm, no stranger to controversy, supposedly posted two images of female models wearing miniskirts leaning over with their underwear showing as part of its 'back to school' range. Cue outrage.

However, it is a bit more complicated than that.

Twitter user Emilie posted the below images last night, which led to the above press coverage today.

The image on the left was posted on the UK version of the firm's Instagram page before being deleted. It does not have any explicit (in the direct sense) link to any 'back to school' range, and was not presented as such. The skirt in question is, however, listed on a section of the UK site below a photo of models next to the words "school days".

The second image in the tweet that quite clearly shows the skirt being... modelled is accessible via > women > mini-skirts on the online store, nowhere near a 'back to school' section, which only exists in that terminology on the US store.

Still with us?

Anyway, all this didn't stop one website getting the wrong end of the stick from Emilie's tweet and including the phrase "back to school" in its copy ten times, while another - which also helpfully blurred out the offending image to make it look much worse than it actually was - included it six times.

American Apparel do get models to pose in schools and has a highly questionable and suggestive Lolita range, but that range has no direct connection with children's clothes or anything to do with going back to school.

That said, there are still plenty of other reasons to feel uncomfortable with the way American Apparel sells its clothes.

Emilie told i100: "The way in which American Apparel objectify and sexualise female bodices is damaging and rooted in patriarchal notions about a woman's worth.

"Adverts like this reduce women down to little more than body parts to be claimed, and reinforce idea that our primary purpose is to be appealing to men."

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