The Real Problem with Abercrombie & Fitch—How Jeffries’ Message Hurts Us ALL

Meme from Facebook

I wasn’t going to blog at all this week. Have been taking a break and refueling. But when I came in from being away for a week, one of the first articles I saw was regarding Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Michael Jeffries’ “marketing campaign” for the preppy clothing line (quoted in the meme above).

Jeffries is being hailed by some marketing experts as a brilliant visionary, but I wonder how he would be perceived if he was excluding people of color or sexual orientation. What would people think if he only wanted “white kids” or “straight people” wearing his clothing line?

Don’t get me wrong, A&F has the right to define their demographic, but we as consumers have a right not to buy clothes from such an uncreative designer that has such a warped vision of beauty and a skewed sense that Skinny=Popular & Cool. Even Perez Hilton weighed in on this matter.

A&F’s marketing campaign is as deep as a puddle, so as a former copy writer, I thought that maybe I could offer some assistance:

We at Abercrombie & Fitch are seriously uncreative fashion designers. It takes true talent to make larger people look equally amazing, and we simply lack that skill and prefer to take the easy route. Hey, it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to make a Size 00 woman look attractive, but to design clothes that make a size 14 woman look just as hot? Wow. We’d totally have to go back to school for that, and then we wouldn’t have time to spray our cologne all over the mall like a crop-duster.

I know this might seem strange, but I don’t think I am all that offended that they don’t carry larger sizes. A lot of stores don’t. But these other stores are at least smart enough not to use Mean Girls Marketing.

The Real Problem with Abercrombie and Fitch

What is troubling about A&F’s stance is that body size is somehow equivalent with beauty, a great attitude and popularity. If you are over a size 10, then clearly you can’t possess any of these qualities. Conversely, if you are so thin you disappear when you turn sideways, then you must be AWESOME and have it all together.

I think Jeffries’ stance hurts all kids on all ends of the size spectrum.

I was never a cool kid *shock face*. I know!

I was the geek who none of the A&F crowd noticed until they needed help with their Chemistry or Physics homework. High school was very hard for me. I owned three pairs of pants and four shirts and it didn’t take long for the A&F crowd to hone in on this. Many of them made it their life mission to point out I wasn’t like them and that I was not much better than gum on the bottom of their Cole Haan shoes.

In my experience, the people who wore these clothes weren’t popular because they were awesome people; they were popular because they ruled the school like Machiavelli. They were pretty on the outside, but mean to the core. Why?

Hurting people hurt people.

It wasn’t until years later that I realized their behavior stemmed from a profound brokenness. If they didn’t have the trendy clothes, if they were so FAT they had to wear a SIZE SIX, they had no identity. They had to purchase it. The labels promised what they had no power to deliver…meaning. Authentic identity.

While kids like me were having fun making our own bad Kung Fu movies and holding all-night Monty Python marathons with fellow members of the Chess Team, those “cool” kids were puking in the shower, drinking themselves into a stupor, or snorting cocaine so they wouldn’t get too fat for their designer clothes.

Yes, There is the Obvious

I know a lot of us are offended by Jeffries’ attitude toward those of us with a fair share of fluff. That’s easy to be angry about. We know this country is facing an obesity epidemic and we do have to get that under control.

Being too overweight creates all kinds of health problems, but there are plenty of amazing, beautiful, intelligent, kind, wonderful people who can’t fit into A&F clothes.

Yet, I don’t think this is the most insidious part of the A&F message.

Labels Lie and People Die

For years, I was naive (like Jeffries). In high school and college, I wanted so much to be like those “cool” kids. Yet, years later, I was astonished how many of the “popular kids” were dead. Some were homeless because of hopeless drug addiction. Others were in and out of rehab and mental facilities.

So many of the kids I assumed to be the “All-American kid with a great attitude and lots of friends” committed suicide because death was the only way they could see to end their inner suffering so cleverly disguised by distressed denim.

Why did these kids choose to end their own life?

No designer label could give them what they so desperately needed—love, meaning, and genuine connection.

I was guilty. I’d bought into the marketing lie—that these kids with these clothes have everything. Now, being older and wiser, I am deeply saddened. What if I’d had the courage to cross the A&F line and realize that “cool guy” was hurting? Would he still be alive?

His Name was Matt

I cry every time I think of him (crying now as I write this). I had such a crush on him, but I didn’t have the right (clothes) to talk to him. I didn’t have enough money to be his friend, or the right “look” to be his girlfriend.

And Matt committed suicide and I’m angry. I will never be able to tell Matt how awesome I really thought he was. I couldn’t see beyond his clothes to notice his drinking and drug problem. I was blinded by the glare of his designer label, the glare that hid the growing darkness that was consuming him. I took his A&F clothes at face value. They became a barrier I couldn’t cross.

Hey, he’s wearing Abercrombie and Fitch, so everything in HIS world is FABULOUS.

Her Name was Adrian

She was a cheerleader, and I was afraid to talk to her. She died because she drank so much alcohol, she asphyxiated in her sleep. She drank to numb the pain hiding behind her trendy clothes; pain none of us saw.

This Crisis Runs Far Deeper than a Box of Krispy Kremes

I believe we are a country in crisis, not only because we struggle with our weight. We are in crisis because we are too easily drawn into the lie. Thin and beautiful people hurt, struggle and are lonely, too. An $80 t-shirt can’t fill the void. Just go to author and former fashion model August McLaughlin’s blog and she talks about this very issue.

I believe Abercrombie & Fitch has every right to limit their market. They have the right to believe their clothes are only for the pretty people. BUT, they do not have the right to define our humanity.

To all of my Fellow Fluffies…

Y’all are awesome and Jeffries is an @$$clown. You are beautiful and every one of you have something special to offer this world. Ignore idiots. Don’t buy the lie that you aren’t special because you can’t wear their clothes.

BUT, don’t buy the lie that those who sport the A&F line are okay. Some of them are profoundly wounded. The designer label could be their way to hide the hurting and broken person below.

To all of the Beautiful People

Yes, we love looking at pictures of you. Being beautiful and thin on the outside is a gift and one you can be proud of. I hope you will be as saddened by Jeffries’ stance as I am. You are more than your Size 2 jeans.

Many of you are artistic, creative, intelligent, kind and good and that should matter. You are awesome on your own without A&F’s help. For Jeffries to assume his clothes make you YOU should just be insulting.

Dare to Cross the A&F Line

I end with this this letter to Abercrombie & Fitch, which says it all. I know that the good life, the rich life is discovered when we look for beauty everywhere. The world is filled with it, and often it isn’t wearing a pair of overpriced capris. I challenge each and every one of us to be brave enough to cross that A&F line—either defect from it, or reach out in spite of it.

What are your thoughts? Were you as upset and saddened by Jeffries’ message as I was? To the popular crowd, are you insulted that Jeffries assumes his clothes is what makes you worthwhile?

Were you the geek who struggled to fit in? What are your thoughts about this growing narcissism we’re seeing? The rise of body dysmorphia? What do you think is dangerous about this consumer culture? To the parents out there, what does this make you feel in regards to your children?

Or, am I out of line? Am I reading too much into this. Hey, I AM a writer. We over-think almost EVERYTHING :D. Feel free to disagree, I just ask you do it respectfully.

I love hearing from you!

And yes, comments count for my contest, but I am not mentioning my books here because this issue is not to market me, but rather to talk about a growing problem we all need to address.

We are not alone.

Vogue Can Go to Hell–Can I Make Peace with My Thighs?

Benelli is my fashion accessory…

Those of you who read this blog know that I am always very upbeat and positive. I believe there are few things in life that can’t be fixed with a smile and elbow grease, but these days I’m losing my sparkle. As we enter into the holiday season, there are all kinds of goodies and treats and we all know that January 1st will be here soon enough. Most of us will be back on the treadmill, vowing that this time and this year things will be different.

The problem I have is this. I have no idea what normal looks like anymore.

I have been battling my weight my entire life. If I didn’t have an exercise routine that rivaled a professional athlete, I was always 30-40 pounds overweight. Even with said exercise routine, I rarely got down to what the charts said I should weigh. In fact, I remember sitting in the plus section of a department store and crying.

Six years ago, I found out I had severe food allergies (gluten, casein & soy). No wonder I’d been fat since the 80s, when all the “experts” deemed meat as evil. You shouldn’t be eating that meat! Have a bagel. Now THAT’S healthy. The healthier I’d tried to eat (low fat, whole grain, skim milk) the more I was poisoning myself.

Once I pulled the offending allergens out of my diet, I finally shred the weight I’d always carried around. I was 130 pounds with very little effort and I looked and felt amazing.

Then I got pregnant.

I had the world’s best pregnancy. I ate gluten-free, dairy-free, soy-free, and organic. I worked out twice a day, six days a week. Even into my 9th month, I was swimming a mile a day and doing step aerobics (even though I could no longer see my feet). Over the course of my pregnancy, I gained 30 pounds. I had a super healthy baby and bounced back to feeling great in no time.

Except…

Three years later, I still have those thirty pounds (plus 10 for a total of 40), no matter what I do or how well I eat. If I train hard and don’t lose, I am told “You’re working out too much.” So when I drop the frequency, I get told, “You need to work out more often.”

My diet is mostly lean protein and green veggies. I only use strict amounts of healthy oils like olive oil or coconut oil and eat only good carbs, and am very strict about them, too. I’ve had alcohol on only 4 occasions since July. I don’t eat sweets, drink soda, or use artificial sweeteners.

But none of that matters, at least when it comes to my weight. I am healthy, have beautiful skin and hair. I have enough energy to power a small city and am never sick, but I am still a size 10-12 and 170 pounds.

Why is it no one looks like me?

When we look on TV, we are confronted with extremes–super skinny or clinically obese. We are calling anorexics “beautiful” and calling dangerously obese women “curvy.” We are an a country that is dying because of euphemisms. I hear parents call morbidly obese children “husky,” “big-boned” or “muscular.” We have retailers calling anorexics “curvy.” Take a look at some of my favorite selections:

This is why I will never give Eddie Bauer another DIME.

Someone throw this model a sandwich…

Can someone explain to Eddie Bauer what “curvy” means?

Or NY & Company…

Curvy Skinny Jean? WTH?

I wrote Eddie Bauer AND New York & Company letters. I received a nice form letter about “how much my opinion is valued.” Yeah.

Talbots did only slightly better in my Tour of Curves…

Okay, well at least she looks like she ate…once.

Everywhere I went, I tried to find models who looked like me. I’m not super skinny, but I am not yet plus-sized, either. I was shocked at the models retailers used in their catalogs. My favorite models were at THIS site. Lucky Brand you got LUCKY! Their models are so thin they look bow-legged.

SERIOUSLY?

Give me a BREAK.

Shame on you, retailers.

At Old Navy, they are kind enough to have Plus size clothing, but they don’t use actual models, because we all know fat girls aren’t pretty.

Fa la la la la la la la FAIL

Apparently no woman exists who is between HER:

And HER…

Barbie Didn’t Make Us Fat…

I constantly hear this silly debate about how Barbie is to blame for girls (and later, women) having body issues.

News Flash…BARBIE IS A DOLL. WE DIDN’T GROW UP BELIEVING WE SHOULD LOOK LIKE A PLASTIC MATTEL TOY. Seriously, give us women a little credit.

High Fashion Dysfunction

We did, however, watch the fashion industry and television and film continue to elevate women who were thinner and thinner and dangerously thinner.

I played with Barbies my entire childhood and felt great about myself. In fact, I never had issues with how I looked until I was fourteen and started reading Seventeen Magazine…and no one looked like me. The girls were all over 5’7,” less than 110 pounds, and ONE body type—the stick.

Girls these days have it even harder. In the remake of the hit 90s show 90210, most of the actresses were frighteningly thin. At one point Jessica Stroup weighed in at 100 pounds, yet she is 5’8″. Shenae Grimes (5’3″) weighed in at 90 pounds.

Fashion Needs to Take Responsibility

It really irritates me that people can blame a plastic toy, but fail to keep the fashion industry accountable. The fashion industry has always been the thought leader when it comes to what we as a society consider beautiful.

In the 1950s, if you weren’t Caucasian, blonde, with blue eyes and curves, you weren’t pretty. It was the fashion industry that started breaking the rules, who started highlighting women of different races, who started showing skinny girls as beautiful in a world that valued the Marylin Monroe body type only. It was the fashion industry who took a risk on a woman with a gap between her teeth (Lauren Bacall), and women of color (Iman).

There was a time that fashion led the charge to opening society’s definition of beauty, yet now when we have reached a crisis point they want to claim they aren’t doing anything wrong and their models aren’t that skinny (Karl Lagerfeld). And, yes, Vogue claims it will tsk tsk the too-young and too-skinny, but I’m not overly impressed with the change. The models still look like bony Amazons in need of a sandwich.

Hey, Vogue! Want to be interesting? Don’t put a bird cage on a woman’s head, put some meat on her bones! You think you are art, when all you are is predictable.

Gee, another anorexic Amazon with poofy lips.

 *shock face*

Retailers are Responsible

One might give high fashion a bit of a pass, since no woman is going to wear a birdcage on her head and a bra on the outside of her clothes (and not get carted off to the loony bin), but retailers? Gap, Lucky, Abercrombie, NY&Co, Eddie Bauer ALL use models who are far too thin. Look at the pictures above. If the camera adds ten pounds?

I’ve tried writing letters, but that hasn’t gotten me very far. I feel frustrated. I’ve had all the blood work and I am a perfectly healthy woman…who is a size 10-12.

Can I Make Peace with My Thighs?

I don’t know. That’s the best answer I have. I feel that, if I were African American, I’d be the perfect size and shape. In fact, when I went to get my thyroid tested, the phlebotomist (an African American female) thought they’d written something wrong on my chart.

You’re here for OBESITY? Girl, you look FABULOUS!

We live in a world of magazines that hail how beautiful and curvy Beyonce and Mariah Carey are at a size 12-14, but then the same magazines call Jessica Simpson a cow for being the same size 12-14.  Women of color can have curves, but us white gals need to look more like Posh Spice. We can never be too rich or too thin.

I feel like I am at the mad Hatter’s Tea Party where nothing makes sense. No one looks like me, and every ad, every movie and television show is a reminder of how I don’t measure up, how I’m not trying hard enough. I try to buy clothes, and Target has 23 different new “skinny jeans.” I can’t buy clothes because nothing in the Misses department fits a woman with thighs, but I am too small for the Plus size department…

…so I live in yoga clothes, which is fine because I live at yoga and in the gym anyway. We no longer even make clothes to fit normal people anyway.

Where Have All the Size 8s Gone?

Those of us in the middle just seem to have disappeared. I can’t help but wonder if that isn’t at the heart of this nation’s disease. Back in the era when the size 6 and 8 were ideal, we didn’t have near the obesity rates. Have we elevated an impossible thinness and that has made our nation fatter than ever?

My Personal Protest

I decided long ago that I would no longer purchase fashion magazines. Additionally, I refuse to shop from any store that uses only super skinny models. I think if enough women did this, the industry would change. I would say write a letter, but I didn’t get that far.

I know there are naturally thin and small women out there. I never said retailers shouldn’t use skinny models at all. But they shouldn’t be using bone-skinny models to the exclusion of everyone else. If this was a race issue, the fashion industry would be in court by now. If they only photographed Caucasian blondes to the exclusion of Latinas and African American women, they’d be in trouble (and should be). But these days we are facing a different kind of discrimination and it is costing our girls their self esteems.

Out of Control

I have never believed in crash diets or fad diets, but I have gotten to the point that I feel my attitude about food has gotten out of control. I can’t dedicate this much time thinking about everything I eat and do.

Is it non-GMO, gluten-free, dairy-free?

Did I have enough carbs? Too many carbs?

Enough protein? Too much protein?

Enough exercise? Am I overtraining?

The NEW New Year’s Resolution

I’m healthy. My blood tests prove that. For this I am very grateful. I eat really well and have the hair skin and energy levels to show for it. I will work on focusing more on what I do have than what I don’t. Vogue can go to hell. I vow to find a way to make peace with my thighs and somehow learn to love being a size 10-12.

What about you? Do you think this country is out of control? Do you think the extremes have something to do with this? Do you have a hard time accepting yourself as beautiful? What do you struggle with? Have you made peace with your body? Do you have any advice or suggestions?