A&F
So...for the longest time I was a very good customer of Abercrombie & Fitch (and I do mean very good customer...like several hundred dollars per month...and my closet tells the nasty, expensive story!) Anyway...when I heard several months ago about the class action lawsuits that have been brought against them for discrimination and hiring practices...I was simply pissed that any company would harbor and or tolerate these kinds of practices,policies etc....now let me just first say..im not a stupid person (ya cant tell it from my spelling and typing skills..but anywho..lol) nor im i blind...
Anyway....I have closed out my days of visiting A&F and droping my hard earned money on a "Label..that promotes...things in which I do not want to be a part of" so for the last 8 months or so...i havent been buying there and have been weeding out the A&F from my closet..(God Love Platos Closet..they pay good money for A&F and Hollister).........Which by the by....Hollister is part of the A&F Family if you didnt already know that...so .....anywho...i found this article today and it speaks volumes ...so here it is:
*************************************************************************************
VOICES
Why I Hate Abercrombie & Fitch
In the wake of a large antidiscrimination settlement, social critic Dwight A. McBride explains what he has against the popular clothing brand.
by Dwight A. McBride
I cheered a couple of weeks ago when the announcement was made that Abercrombie & Fitch had settled its class action discrimination lawsuit to the tune of $40 million. That’s probably not surprising: I have an essay collection coming out in February titled Why I Hate Abercrombie & Fitch. But why my private little celebration? In a world where few elections—and even fewer social policy issues these days—seem to be going my way, this settlement represented some glimmer of hope that truth can still win out.
Although the company has admitted no wrongdoing, the large financial settlement in this case speaks for itself. Since the last decade, Abercrombie & Fitch has devised a very clear marketing and advertising strategy which celebrates whiteness—a particularly privileged and leisure-class whiteness—and makes use of it as a “lifestyle” that it trades on today to sell otherwise extremely dull, uninspiring, and ordinary clothing. The danger of such a marketing scheme is that it depends upon the racist thinking of its consumer population in order to thrive. Anyone familiar with the rise of the company and its label in recent years recognizes that it has done precisely that.
I believe in what Hannah Arendt once called “the banality of evil.” According to one philosopher, Arendt’s argument was that “people who carry out unspeakable crimes, like Eichmann, a top administrator in the machinery of the Nazi death camps, may not be crazy fanatics at all, but rather ordinary individuals who simply accept the premises of their state and participate in any ongoing enterprise with the energy of good bureaucrats.” In the words of another philosopher-commentator on the banality of evil: “Clichés, stock phrases, adherence to conventional, standardized codes of expression and conduct have the socially recognized function of protecting us against reality.” This statement well describes the corporate culture of Abercrombie and the quasi-cultish devotion they seem to inspire.
Ultimately, I suppose my reasons for hating Abercrombie & Fitch are not so different from the reasons that I have little truck with gay Republicans. It is not surprising when one observes that the attitudes of those sporting Abercrombie often seem to have a great deal in common with political conservatives as well. In the case of gay Republicans, we are often dealing with a group of people who see themselves as heirs to the mantles of whiteness and all the privileges of it—except for the fact that their sexuality sets them apart. Were it not but for their gayness, they too could enjoy the same kind of mobility, belonging, nondiscrimination, social respect and respectability, wider economic entrepreneurial opportunity, and, indeed, the right to discriminate against all of those others who do not belong. After all, to borrow a well-known slogan from a surprisingly appropriate context, “membership has its privileges.” This is seen most readily in the fiscal conservatism of many gay Republicans, who are typically not supporters of affirmative action, welfare, or any other variety of social programs designed to support the poor and people of color in the U.S. And when one looks at the disproportionate numbers of blacks and Latinos who make up the poor in the U.S., the poor and people of color are populations that in public discussion don’t always require a great deal of delineation. Just as much as gay Republicans are desperate to belong to a tribe of privilege and cultural and social dominance, so are those who are a part of the cult of Abercrombie.
Surely we know that people are not buying “Abercrombie” for the clothes. The catalog itself isn’t even about featuring those, after all. People buy “Abercrombie” to purchase membership into a lifestyle. Lisa Marsh, the fashion business writer for The New York Post, said that Abercrombie’s “aggressive lifestyle marketing makes you feel like you’re buying a polo shirt and getting the horse and summer house on Martha’s Vineyard with it.” Were that the extent of what they were selling, I might have less of a problem with Abercrombie. But to brazenly evolve a way of playing on consumers’ worst racially based fears and inadequacies born of a racist structure that defines everything from standards of beauty to your access to having that house on Martha’s Vineyard goes beyond mere “lifestyle marketing.” In my judgment, that crosses the line into a kind of racism whose desire—played out to its logical conclusion—is not unlike a variety of ethnic cleansing.
In its desire to produce and play on the consumer’s desire for a white, “good-looking” world where one can “get away from it all,” and to sell that idea as the “good life” in the context of a racist society, only redeploys and reinscribes the fundamental logic of white supremacy that makes such a marketing strategy possible and even appealing in the first place. This says a great deal, perhaps, about the status of “race relations” in the U.S. It says even more about the deep and abiding contradictions that can be accommodated in our public thinking about race today that would scarcely have been possible to imagine even in the late 1960s or 1970s. Another failing of the radicality of liberalism? Perhaps. In any case, the same reasoning that makes Abercrombie palatable to a U.S. public is the same reasoning that makes claims of “reverse discrimination” palatable and possible in our society. And that, in the end, is why I hate Abercrombie and Fitch.
Dwight A. McBride is chair and Leon Forrest Professor of the Department of African American Studies at Northwestern University. His new book, Why I Hate Abercrombie & Fitch: Essays on Race and Sexuality (NYU Press) will be released in January 2005. He lives in Chicago, Illinois, and Saugatuck, Michigan.
night...dancing on a box in those same boxers at Axis or any other twink night club...so sex does sell
The things I've always seen and noted about A&F (but didnt register until now!)
1) Never an ugly person working in any A&F Retail Store.
2) Never an older person working in any A&F Retail Store.
3) Never any black, hispanic or asian people working in any A&F Retail Store.
4) Never a "larger person" either:overweight,bigboned,largeframe..whatever you want to call it ...working in any A&F Retail Store.
5) Rarely will you ever find over a size 36 inch waste in mens pants or anything higher than an XL (or what they like to call XL-Muscle Fit...aka..tight ass overpriced shirt)
And "I" have never seen anything larger than a 38 inch waste and thats if you can even find them that big.
6) Clothes all made in depressed 3rd world nations (through child labor im sure) by "non..anglo saxon white folks" (who of course they would never hire for a retail job!)
7) They sell "SEX" at least to the teenage crowd (walkin to any A&F store at Christmas and you will find a hot ass 17- 18'ish yr old young man who is gorgeous wearing "nothing but a pair of moose boxers and some plastic flip flongs" when its -10 outside) and a wafe skinny young girl in a bra and some little ass duke shorts! its sex plan and clear....lets face it, us gay men...will walk around A&F for the whole day checking out this little hot boy...who more than likely will be found that
Anyway....I have closed out my days of visiting A&F and droping my hard earned money on a "Label..that promotes...things in which I do not want to be a part of" so for the last 8 months or so...i havent been buying there and have been weeding out the A&F from my closet..(God Love Platos Closet..they pay good money for A&F and Hollister).........Which by the by....Hollister is part of the A&F Family if you didnt already know that...so .....anywho...i found this article today and it speaks volumes ...so here it is:
*************************************************************************************
VOICES
Why I Hate Abercrombie & Fitch
In the wake of a large antidiscrimination settlement, social critic Dwight A. McBride explains what he has against the popular clothing brand.
by Dwight A. McBride
I cheered a couple of weeks ago when the announcement was made that Abercrombie & Fitch had settled its class action discrimination lawsuit to the tune of $40 million. That’s probably not surprising: I have an essay collection coming out in February titled Why I Hate Abercrombie & Fitch. But why my private little celebration? In a world where few elections—and even fewer social policy issues these days—seem to be going my way, this settlement represented some glimmer of hope that truth can still win out.
Although the company has admitted no wrongdoing, the large financial settlement in this case speaks for itself. Since the last decade, Abercrombie & Fitch has devised a very clear marketing and advertising strategy which celebrates whiteness—a particularly privileged and leisure-class whiteness—and makes use of it as a “lifestyle” that it trades on today to sell otherwise extremely dull, uninspiring, and ordinary clothing. The danger of such a marketing scheme is that it depends upon the racist thinking of its consumer population in order to thrive. Anyone familiar with the rise of the company and its label in recent years recognizes that it has done precisely that.
I believe in what Hannah Arendt once called “the banality of evil.” According to one philosopher, Arendt’s argument was that “people who carry out unspeakable crimes, like Eichmann, a top administrator in the machinery of the Nazi death camps, may not be crazy fanatics at all, but rather ordinary individuals who simply accept the premises of their state and participate in any ongoing enterprise with the energy of good bureaucrats.” In the words of another philosopher-commentator on the banality of evil: “Clichés, stock phrases, adherence to conventional, standardized codes of expression and conduct have the socially recognized function of protecting us against reality.” This statement well describes the corporate culture of Abercrombie and the quasi-cultish devotion they seem to inspire.
Ultimately, I suppose my reasons for hating Abercrombie & Fitch are not so different from the reasons that I have little truck with gay Republicans. It is not surprising when one observes that the attitudes of those sporting Abercrombie often seem to have a great deal in common with political conservatives as well. In the case of gay Republicans, we are often dealing with a group of people who see themselves as heirs to the mantles of whiteness and all the privileges of it—except for the fact that their sexuality sets them apart. Were it not but for their gayness, they too could enjoy the same kind of mobility, belonging, nondiscrimination, social respect and respectability, wider economic entrepreneurial opportunity, and, indeed, the right to discriminate against all of those others who do not belong. After all, to borrow a well-known slogan from a surprisingly appropriate context, “membership has its privileges.” This is seen most readily in the fiscal conservatism of many gay Republicans, who are typically not supporters of affirmative action, welfare, or any other variety of social programs designed to support the poor and people of color in the U.S. And when one looks at the disproportionate numbers of blacks and Latinos who make up the poor in the U.S., the poor and people of color are populations that in public discussion don’t always require a great deal of delineation. Just as much as gay Republicans are desperate to belong to a tribe of privilege and cultural and social dominance, so are those who are a part of the cult of Abercrombie.
Surely we know that people are not buying “Abercrombie” for the clothes. The catalog itself isn’t even about featuring those, after all. People buy “Abercrombie” to purchase membership into a lifestyle. Lisa Marsh, the fashion business writer for The New York Post, said that Abercrombie’s “aggressive lifestyle marketing makes you feel like you’re buying a polo shirt and getting the horse and summer house on Martha’s Vineyard with it.” Were that the extent of what they were selling, I might have less of a problem with Abercrombie. But to brazenly evolve a way of playing on consumers’ worst racially based fears and inadequacies born of a racist structure that defines everything from standards of beauty to your access to having that house on Martha’s Vineyard goes beyond mere “lifestyle marketing.” In my judgment, that crosses the line into a kind of racism whose desire—played out to its logical conclusion—is not unlike a variety of ethnic cleansing.
In its desire to produce and play on the consumer’s desire for a white, “good-looking” world where one can “get away from it all,” and to sell that idea as the “good life” in the context of a racist society, only redeploys and reinscribes the fundamental logic of white supremacy that makes such a marketing strategy possible and even appealing in the first place. This says a great deal, perhaps, about the status of “race relations” in the U.S. It says even more about the deep and abiding contradictions that can be accommodated in our public thinking about race today that would scarcely have been possible to imagine even in the late 1960s or 1970s. Another failing of the radicality of liberalism? Perhaps. In any case, the same reasoning that makes Abercrombie palatable to a U.S. public is the same reasoning that makes claims of “reverse discrimination” palatable and possible in our society. And that, in the end, is why I hate Abercrombie and Fitch.
Dwight A. McBride is chair and Leon Forrest Professor of the Department of African American Studies at Northwestern University. His new book, Why I Hate Abercrombie & Fitch: Essays on Race and Sexuality (NYU Press) will be released in January 2005. He lives in Chicago, Illinois, and Saugatuck, Michigan.
posted by higherthings871 at 11:09 AM
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