My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

Kanye West's album cover for his most recent album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy had been banned from selling in stores because of nudity . He changed it to another odd cover but it was more appropriate to sell in stores. 

West said on Twitter, "Banned in the USA!!! They don't want me chilling on the couch with my phoenix!" West's refute to the ban was that the cover is art; it's a painting. I agree. I think that art has no boundaries. There is meaning to the choices that a person makes to create art. I don’t know what West’s reason for his album art was but he probably had some.

Apparently he is the evil looking bear (almost all of his album covers, he is represented as a bear) and the scary monster is a phoenix. The phoenix on the other hand, is what's odd. She is armless with wings instead. She has a polka dot tail and a scary face. Regardless of the scary face, she is obviously a woman. I think that the phoenix is represented as a woman because birds are feminine creatures. They symbolize beauty, for example the swan (even though this bird is very ugly). The phoenix itself is from mythology. West put his own spin on this by changing the tail that is usually gold to polka dot patterned. There’s a short movie along with the album that matches the description of the mythological bird; I guess he just decided to completely redesign what a phoenix looks like.
He changed his album cover to a ballerina which relates to a music video for the song "Runaway." This image is a completely different topic as to why he made the chick have a mustache. 

Dolce & Gabbana Advertisements

I decided to pick a Dolce & Gabbana ad because I remember in the beginning of the semester looking at ads and trying to interpret the meaning. I remember working in groups looking at a very odd Dolce and Gabbana ad with women portrayed as antelope or some kind of animal with antlers. I realized that almost all of these ads are super strange and there's probably significant meaning to them too. Trying to understand what the intentional meaning really is is the hard part is.
This has different approach than what ads usually do. Advertisers usually follow patterns in society, however, this ad does the opposite.  In cultures like American or especially in Middle Eastern cultures, men are the ones that have control over women but in this ad, the women are controlling the men.. I think there was purpose behind making the women have power. Women always seem like they're competing with men for power. They claim that men have more opportunities in society. I think they chose women to have power because women are generally more into fashion than men therefore women were the targets of this ad. 
The men in this ad are naked. Most men in Dolce & Gabbana ads are very muscular, this one also. Although they are manly looking they seem "womanly" because they're being taken hostage by the women. One woman is able to control a strong looking man. It might be prejudice to say that I think that the men in Dolce & Gabbana ads have homosexual characters but I think they make men look like that purposely. I don't know what the purpose of it is though. 
The strangest thing about this ad is that the walls are padded. They're nice padded walls because they're leather but that doesn't change the fact that padded walls are for psychiatric hospitals which indicates something could be wrong with either the men or women in it. I'm confused who actually is supposed to belong in the hospital because it can go either way; the men look like they belong there because they're naked and need restraining or it could be the women rebelling against the authorities.