fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2380 ]

[ SECRET POST #2380 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2380 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 035 secrets from Secret Submission Post #340.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

How can this jerk talk about "being exclusionary" and get away with it? If someone said this about ANY other group (ethnic or ideological), they'd be instantly sued after the media got done eviscerating them publicly. I don't care if it's his company or the corporate way; these statements are beyond offensive:

“In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids,” he told the site. “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."

excerpted from this article: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/abercrombie-loathes-black-much-employees-153800571.html

I admit to being far too fond of black and I wear XL tops, so I am probably biased, but this guy is an uber-asshat.

stop reading yahoo news

your life becomes automatically happier

boom problem solved

this was news like a month ago..............

OP

I understand that he made the comment I quoted in 2006. Back then, I weighed closer to 400 lbs instead of the 190 I am now. I probably didn't register this story then because I was used to being excluded from everything "cool", "popular", or under size 24-26. Now that I'm smaller and fit an XL instead of an 3 or 4XL, I'm just becoming aware of how completely marginalized I was when I was at my heaviest.

Why would anyone buy from this guy's company? I don't.(If I couldn't buy from them when I was at my largest, they don't get my money now.) And this article, these comments, would be enough to make me avoid Abercrombie on principle alone if I ever did consider purchasing their products. I'm just shocked that this kind of nastiness is unremarkable in our culture.

Why would anyone buy from this guy's company?

Because they want to be the cool, sexy people who are allowed to buy Abercrombie & Fitch products, not the outsiders who are uncool and undesirable. It's aspirational & a part of the marketing strategy.

Which is terrible, just as terrible in its own way as the nastiness and cruelty in the culture, but I think some measure of this is just human nature.

But what clothing line doesn't market to a particular group? Are you more upset about WHO he's marketing his clothes for? Because that's just stupid; those people do exist and they do buy clothes.

I'm willing to bet he was breathless inches away from specifying what other physical features - up to and including skin tone - those cool all-American kids should have to wear his clothing, too, but he had juuuust enough self-preservation left to stop himself.

Yeah, the guy's a dickhead, but there's nothing you can really do about it, except not buy his clothes, which you weren't going to do anyway. I mean, he's not going to be sued because "people who aren't cool and / or attractive" is not a group that has any legal definition and isn't a protected class (IANAL ofc). And the media doesn't care all that much because, well, I don't know, he's being a dickhead but he's being a dickhead in an ordinary, unsurprising way that people are used to. I don't know. People don't like it but what can you do about people being dicks?

But there are a lot of companies that have pretty targeted demographics like that. Most people only see this guy as bad because that target is mostly attractive white people.

His clothes suck anyway.

Yeah, I'm still shocked that a clothing company has a certain type of customer in mind. It's just like those asshole contractors who build homes I can't afford in neighborhoods with a median income of $5M. And restaurants that only serve a certain kind of food. And don't get me started on restaurants that have dress codes and don't allow children! It's almost like some people actually want to go to a nice restaurant where T-shirts are still considered underwear and they won't have to listen to kids screaming or running around like at McDonald's.

Are there restaurants or neighborhoods where only attractive people are allowed to buy food or houses, though? Because in that case I'd be awfully tempted to lurk in the parking lots of the restaurants or bike down the sidewalks of the housing developments, and ruin the beautiful peoples' day with my ugly mug and short fat hairy body. I might even wear a bikini for extra horror.

Why is excluding unattractive people worse than excluding poor people?

DA

...What are you getting at here? That it's unfair for a place to decide how much it wants to charge for it's services because someone might not be able to afford it? Because it's generally well within a places rights to decide that, and mot won't care enough about your social class to turn you away as long as you can afford to pay.

Also, that's something entirely different from 'You're not attractive enough to shop/eat here!' So it's kind of like comparing apples and oranges.

Yeah dude, I was having trouble figuring out above anon's reasoning too.

We tend to ascribe the latter to the automatic, inhuman operation of the free market, which may be deplorable and something to be corrected but which is not really the result of someone's specific choice and not open to specifically moral condemnation, whereas the former (at least in this case) is something that someone has made an explicit choice to do and therefore something that we feel capable of talking about in moral terms.

I don't know if that distinction makes sense - certainly, many people have made the case that the capitalist system and the way it excludes poor people are the result of moral choices and valuations - but I think that's definitely the way we tend to think about it. When poor people are excluded, it's just a thing that happens; when unattractive people are excluded, it's someone choosing to be mean.

I shop at Lane Bryant and they cater to a certain type of customer, too. Namely, females size 16 and over. Somehow, I can't imagine anyone complaining about that not getting dogpiled.

OP

Lane Bryant carries some nice clothes. When I was growing up, the only selections we had were double-knot polyester tent-like dresses in Ubiquitous Black, Battleship Grey, Navy Blue, and Crap Brown. If a Catherine's hadn't opened up locally when I was like 17-18, I would have grown up without ever owning a pair of blue jeans. I am grateful for places that provided me with color, style, and selection to make the most of the shitty hand my biology dealt me.

I guess I am appalled that some schmuck out there plays on that to sell his crap. He's not being subtle or suggestive, hinting that his clothes will make you seem more popular or attractive; he has the balls to make it plain that certain people aren't suited to his product, (they aren't worthy/attractive/slim enough?) and people still buy his stuff. Why in the hell someone hasn't made a bigger stink about this baffles me. I mean people lose their minds over less overt bigotry than this every day, how has he escaped (for the most part) any detraction for his encouragement of this elitist mindset? I don't get it.

I was never his target market(obviously) and I am waaaaay too old to shop there now, imo, even if I was small enough to fit the shit. Maybe it's that I remember how it felt to never wear the cool clothes or I'm still at my fattest in my head or heart, but this article really made me feel horrible for young people today.

TL:dr- I hate the idea that some one is so casual about dismissing a whole bunch of people because of their size and XL isn't even that big. Color me stupid or naive or maudlin, what have you, I suppose.

NAYRT

Seriously, when Size 6 women with perfect bodies find that only a handful of stores carry clothes in their size--and those clothes consist of a tiny selection of punitively hideous smocks and doubleknit polyester slacks--they can piss and moan about being "excluded" from Lane Bryant.

Don't worry, the company's not doing too well since he said that ;P

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ SECRET POST #2380 ]

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