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"  Oh, American Apparel. How often I wore your super-tight forest green U-neck dress as an NYU sophomore in 2007, and how much I now regret the Facebook pictures that resulted. (Let&amp;#039;s just say I can never run for public office.) But the brand&amp;#039;s ad strategy \u2014 which generally involves gamine-like female AA employees in various scantily-clad, come-hither poses that are enough to make Don Draper blush \u2014 has been controversial even before it hit all the major cities.  The man behind these images is American Apparel&amp;#039;s CEO Dov Charney, who makes notoriously skeevy perv-cum-hipster &amp;quot;Uncle Terry&amp;quot; Richardson look like an SVU-driving soccer dad. Charney&amp;#039;s been accused multiple times of sexually harassing his female employees and once blithely masturbated in front of a reporter from the now-defunct Jane Magazine.  So it&amp;#039;s unsurprising that British watchdog group the Advertising Standards Authority has taken issue with the latest crop of ads from the retailer, reports the New York Daily News. &amp;quot;We considered there was a voyeuristic quality to the images, which served to heighten the impression that the women were vulnerable and in sexually provocative poses. For the reasons given, we considered the ads were likely to cause serious offense to visitors to American Apparel&amp;#039;s website.&amp;quot; The ads depict a woman in a bodysuit, thigh highs and a large knitted sweater who appears to be sans underwear. In other images from the same campaign, close-up shots of her crotch show a pretty clear outline of her business (o hai vulva). As the English would say, &amp;quot;Cripes.&amp;quot; Are these more gratuitous than the various ads that have come before? Maybe. But the brand&amp;#039;s vacillated from bankruptcy and back over the last few years, no doubt due in part to the shock value of the ads, and Charney&amp;#039;s been getting away with this stuff for a long time now. I highly doubt that anything&amp;#039;s gonna change. If nothing else, the potential ban will probably help sales in cities like London. Follow Anna on Twitter: @annabreslaw "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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