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Make this into a thread for ninjahoodToday's recipe for rumination includes profanity, humor, blue #9, current events, fashion and fat people.
The CEO of Abercrombie and Fitch didn't say **** that hasn't ALWAYS been said.
http://undermyfitted.blogspot.com/2013/05/one-size-fits-all-american.html
By now, I'm sure most people have seen or heard of the above quote from Abercrombie CEO Michael Jeffries explaining why you won't find clothes over a certain size in that particular store. Skipping the sugar coating for the benefit of any diabetics affected, he came right out and said that thin, attractive people were society's cool kids and the other misfits and irregulars pretty much didn't count.
For sharing his uncensored marketing strategy, he was raked over the coals by the "everyone is beautiful" crowd. A firestorm of outrage engulfed social media, threats of protests and boycotts abounded and almost everyone generally decided he was a big stupid meanie head.
Well...except for me, of course. I looked at his words and actually felt a sense of respect for what he said.
Don't get me wrong. I don't hate fat people. Some of my best friends are fat people. My kid is half-fat. At 6'4" and 240ish pounds, I myself might be counted as a fat people in the eyes of Mr. Abercrombie. All I'm saying is that his message isn't one we've never heard before...he's just the first person to acknowledge it verbatim.
Is this concept of the "All-American" something he came up with? I don't think so, otherwise you wouldn't have had a mental image of a tall, strapping Caucasian-American teenager wearing a varsity jacket on his athletic frame or a pretty blonde white girl with a big, bright smile in a sweater and skirt before you even read this sentence. Our candid CEO didn't invent these categories, he just saw that most people that buy his clothing want to fit into them. That's solid branding where I come from.
I mean, think about it. How often are we told that thin, attractive people are better than other people? True or false, how many commercials promise the items they advertise will make you cooler, make you sexier, make you look taller, make you look thinner, make people like you? (For contrast, how many products promote that they will make you fatter and more aesthetically challenged? Plenty will, most let you find out on your own.)
Whether it's food, furniture or smartphones, you can bet there will be at least slightly above-average looking people featured (unless an otherwise is there to be made into a joke). The point implied is that you too can be one of these privileged and happy people if you just buy, and people spend money they don't have to buy **** they don't need in the hopes of making that dream come true every day. The absence of counterpoints to my claim throughout all of industry says more than any CEO of one business ever could. Why would companies spend billions upon billions of dollars to promote something that most people didn't think was pretty desirable?
Let's even move past the commercials. I'd wager that 9/10 people want to somehow buy the best version of themselves, so it's not really fair to point out that people who want to make money try to sell it. How about the rest of media? Movies, TV, sports, music, the news? Quick, name your top 20 favorite overweight, unattractive entertainers (bonus difficulty: none of them can be famous for being made fun of).
I'll give you as long as you want because I bet you'll see my point before you get to 15.
The fact is that attractive people are generally seen as superior to less attractive people by much of society. All Jeffries did was acknowledge that he's trying to profit from it. If anything, that action is worthy of more admiration than faking sensitivity and doing the same **** anyway. (To draw a racial parallel, I have more respect for somebody who will call me your favorite ethnic slur to my face than somebody who will have a friendly drink with me on the way to their Klan meeting.)
The part of this I find the most laughable is that this will somehow destroy the company. Anybody who believes that never took a marketing class. If anything, distinguishing their cheaply made and fairly generic clothing by saying that only a certain class of person can wear it will only make it a hotter topic. The same strategy is why people pay hundreds for a pair of sunglasses or spend over $1,000 on a pair of shoes that will not be worn on stage to perform for thousands of screaming fans.
It's his company, and he can drive all the business away from it he wants even if that's what would happen...but if making padded swimsuits to cause preteens to appear more attractive didn't torpedo that place, saying "we make clothes for cool kids" damn sure won't. When you strip all the armchair activism and "anti-bullying" propaganda away, what you're left with is people getting suckered into a marketing ploy that hurt their feelings.
I certainly understand if people choose to not shop at the store any more. If an establishment politely informed me that they hated my kind, I'd probably avoid it too. However, I suspect that the root of the issue goes deeper than that. I think it was a harsh reminder to our bubble wrapped kid-glove society that consumerism is shallow, looks do matter and not everybody gets to play with the cool kids. (Which is okay from this angle, I've always believed that the people who like me are the cool kids.)
What people are so upset about is not that Jeffries spoke these words...it's that somewhere in their mind, they believe them too. So, maybe instead of being upset at the head of a clothing company for being honest in his attempts to sell clothes, people should decide whether they're happy with themselves or not. Those that are and can't (or won't) shop at Abercrombie as a result really aren't missing anything, and wouldn't give a single damn about some store's opinion of them. Those that are not have bigger problems than where their overpriced jeans come from.
Definitely thread worthy
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