Executives at controversial fashion brand American Apparel have decided to clean up the company’s image. In the process, they’ve decided that nipples and body hair on adult women are on par with child pornography in terms of inappropriate sexualization. 
The company’s decision comes at the tail end of a long history of courting public attention through outrage.
Last year, the company posted and quickly removed an advertisement on its U.K. social media accounts featuring a picture shot from below of a woman dressed as a schoolgirl. Last week, another ad was banned in Britain because it featured a woman appearing younger than 16-years-old wearing a revealing body suit. 
The public was justifiably upset over the ads. Unfortunately, this was likely a calculated attention-grabbing strategy on American Apparel’s part. 
The brand went in the opposite direction in its New York store.
Rather than fetishizing children, the store’s window display featured three mannequins with nipples and pubic hair distinctly visible through sheer garments. 
District Visual Manager Dee Myles claimed the display was meant to celebrate natural beauty. While there is certainly nothing wrong with making mannequins more human, problems arise when it is done as a publicity stunt, as most of American Apparel’s actions are. 
But since American Apparel CEO Dov Charney — who was seen as symbolic of the brand’s obsession with sex and underage girls — was fired in December, new CEO Paula Schneider has promised to distance the brand from its controversial history. 
Part of that campaign involves making American Apparel models look more like mannequins by airbrushing their nipples and pubic hair on the
company’s website. 
But a move like this, far from a step in the right direction, sends all the wrong signals. 
Airbrushing human features off of models in an attempt to desexualize the brand is to claim that the female body is inherently sexual. And with regard to the brand’s history of sexualizing children, American Apparel is doing itself no favors by removing all signs of puberty from its models. 
The images in question are of lingerie models in sheer underwear. Ostensibly, this is what real women (the actual size of women’s bodies is another issue entirely) will look like in sheer underwear. 
Granted, put an image of a semi-naked woman on the Internet, and there is no doubt that someone will sexualize it. But unlike the U.K. ads and the New York mannequins, these images were not flaunted in the public’s faces. They were there, as far as I can tell, as a legitimate reference for women looking to buy the lingerie. 
American Apparel’s problem was not anatomically correct models and mannequins. It was the brand’s constant objectification of women, especially women who looked like children, to court controversy and turn a profit. 
But since the ousting of its pervy CEO, the brand has a real opportunity to do an about-face. Keep the real models — body hair and all — but make sure that they look old enough to vote. 
Schneider claims that American Apparel is a brand devoted to social commentary. Well, here is the chance to embrace it. Rather than baiting people with borderline child pornography, spark outrage by doing positive things like photographing plus-size models or women with leg hair or arm hair or mustaches.  
Airbrushing the human features off of models is about as close to the literal definition of objectification as you can get. As sad as it is, the other choice is to let those with the desire to sexualize lingerie models do as they wish — they’ll do it no matter how much the models resemble mannequins.
But change what actually matters, and at least they’ll be sexualizing grown women rather than children. 
Alex Mendoza is a 22-year-old political science and international studies senior from Baton Rouge. You can reach him on Twitter @alexmendoza_TDR.