Size 10 or Nothing!

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"If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention"

~ Unknown

Michael Jeffries

Photo credits: David Turner

Abercrombie & Fitch only cater for ladies who are no more than size 10 because they don’t specialise in “fat” women wear. For the men, you can breathe, they have XL and XXL in order to “appeal to large athletes”(Lewis in Elite’s Daily feature on Abercrombie & Fitch, May 2013).

CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch Mr Michael Jeffries in a 2006 interview with Salon mentioned that they only hire ‘good-looking’, ‘hot’ people, ”because good-looking people attract other good-looking people, and we want to market to cool, good-looking people. We don’t market to anyone other than that.”

He further stated that their brand aims to sell to the “cool kids”. In his words, “Candidly, we go after the cool kids. We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. A lot of people don’t belong [in our clothes], and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely.”(Basically anyone who isn’t a size 10 or less, isn’t cool or attractive, has a bad attitude and few friends). Criticising other brands for lacking excitement in their strategy he said, “those companies that are in trouble are trying to target everybody: young, old, fat, skinny. But then you become totally vanilla. You don’t alienate anybody, but you don’t excite anybody, either.”

I think by now you’ve guessed i’m here to criticise. Let me start by eliminating the most obviously judgement of me that you’ve already made here. I’m not critiquing because I feel attacked by the brand as a result of my weight as I wouldn’t fall into the “fat” category. As a matter of fact I could easily walk into an Abercrombie & Fitch store and fit me some size 8 pants. But I don’t as I wouldn’t walk into a store and buy jeggings for £130 since i’m a cheap shopper, in the words of Sidney Poitier, “there’s no shame in what you wear, as long as it is clean.” And now, from this knowledge of its discriminatory policy, it’s not a store i’d buy from even if I would spend that much on jeggings.

Having said that, I think you now understand this is not a post driven by emotions from my own insecurities but one as a result of social ethics.

Firstly, I chose the best picture of Mr Jeffries to use in this post(my buddy google can confirm this, though I did contemplate using the worst but that wouldn’t be fair), which forces me to ask; weren’t there ‘better looking’ people A&F could have hired if we are reduced to speaking of hiring based on looks. But needless to say, he was hired based on his credentials as a scholar from CBS and LSE. Now this makes his statements very ironic I must say. Obviously i’m not saying people should be stopped and asked for credentials when shopping, my point is, Mr Jeffries should know something about looks not being everything.

Secondly, let’s not kid ourselves here! The statement that the reason they have up to XXL for men only and not women, in order to appeal to large athletes in the case of men, if anything, is only 30% true(Now you’ll have to forgive me, I don’t do well with numbers, so that was just a rough estimation to help emphasise my point.) The other 70% that is a lie or maybe just something the brand avoids mentioning is something along the lines of “nobody in contemporary society cares how men look”, which then leads me to my third & most important point.

WHY THE DOUBLE STANDARD? I’m not saying don’t have XXL for men, i’m saying have XXL for women too. Why is it that women are objectified, reduced to mere objects, SEX OBJECTS. Why should it matter what size a woman is, if she can pay for the clothes?

Let’s now move away from the pocket value and look at moral values.

Imagine a young girl who’s bullied daily in school as a result of her weight. Everyday, all she looks forward to is the end of the day as she can finally breathe because in school she just feels suffocated by the constant harassment. Bullying in schools is a sensitive issue that our society is currently finding ways to deal with but Mr CEO and A&F here are taking it a notch higher and moving it to the market place; you’re not considered part of the “in crowd” in school, so this is not the place for you either, is basically what they’re saying. Sort of like that clique in an American high school movie others can’t hang out with because they are not tall, skinny and blonde. Like come on, what are we in high school?

Furthermore, I like to think there’s a difference between “fat” and just other body sizes. “Fat” is unhealthy, there’s no possible way you can argue that everyone who weighs more than a size 10 is unhealthy so how does the brand make such a generalisation to call them “fatties”(“No Fatties” is A&F’s marketing strategy). Hypothetically speaking, say they all pass for “fat”, is it really in the place of a brand, or anyone for that matter, to say they can’t sell to such people? And who says people who are size 12, 14, 16 e.t.c are not “good looking”?

Finally, I understand that every brand needs a marketing strategy and it is not in my place to question it, but they make it my business(just as it should be yours) when they openly discriminate, objectify and look down on women. As I stated in a previous post, as we slowly break away from racial divides, a different basis of judgement, amongst many, has emerged. Women are now, more than ever, being judged by the size of their bodies, rather than the content of their characters. Such a primitive social structure should not be allowed and people should not remain quiet simply because it does not affect them.

I will not let this drag on any longer, I think I have stressed my point enough.

For something closely related, read my piece on “What size should be promoted?” here.

Source: Elite Daily.

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