Abercrombie: No Fat Chicks Need Apply

Oh, Abercrombie. Abercrombie. Abercrombie.

When it comes to building a brand for the teen market, Abercrombie & Fitch has done more than make a name for itself. It's created a larger than life, utterly irresistible, almost mythic personality, luring those young adults away from other stores with saner prices. In fact, good luck to my fellow mothers if they happen to be at the mall in search of something practical — say, a sports bra or new gym shoes — for their offspring.

"Can we just look in Abercrombie? Puh-leeeeeeese?" 

The stores are dimly-lit (the better to keep you from actually examining the merchandise or the price tags) with amplified, throbbing music. It's so loud that you can barely hear yourself think, much less hear your teen's negotiations for just one more pair of distressed skin-tight jeans. It honestly feels like hell (and I don't even believe in hell). This is strategic, no doubt. After a few (a very few) minutes, you are desperate to leave and no longer thinking clearly. 

"Must get out of here. Take my MasterCard." 

Not a brand to leave out any of the senses, Abercrombie has its own distinct smell. They douse the clothes and the fixtures — and probably the staff — with their signature scent. It wafts out the store's shuttered entrance and down the walkways of the mall. And once you've made a purchase, it follows you back to your car. Invariably, I have to drive home from Abercrombie's with the windows open.

Then, there are the practically pornographic shopping bags — featuring studly young bucks, tousled hair, six-pack abs, and their jeans pulled down to there. On more than one occasion, I've thrown away perfectly good Abercrombie bags because, really, I'd be too self-conscious to re-use them. I'd feel like a cougar. 

And finally, to complete the Abercrombie experience, the stores only hire picture-perfect people. The supernaturally breathtaking are given jobs as greeters, welcoming you to this adolescent Shangri-La. The drop-dead gorgeous work the cash registers. And the merely beautiful are relegated to folding and stocking shelves.  

Those with zits or unruly hair (a.k.a. regular teenagers) are not welcome. Neither are fatties. And, not just as employees. Abercrombie doesn't want to sell to them either.

According to Abercrombie CEO, Mike Jeffries, "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 Abercrombie], and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely."

"That’s why we hire good-looking people in our stores. 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."

This is an adult speaking?

So that's why the store doesn't have a size XL. (And, trust me, there ain't nothin' particularly large about their L either.) Their jeans only go up to size 10, although they start at 00. For the record, the average American woman wears a size 14.

It's hard for anyone other than a not-quite-developed teenager to squeeze into Abercrombie jeans. But there are plenty of teens who can't either. Alas, they are forced to forego Abercrombie and shop at American Eagle Outfitters, Aeropostale, H&M or Forever 21. I certainly don't feel sorry for any lost revenue on the part of Abercrombie & Fitch. But, I do think it's a shame that a large number of larger teens have yet another reason to feel self-conscious or somehow less than those who happen to weigh less.

My own teen daughter, always lean and athletic, is getting curvier as she gets older. 

Hello? Women have curves.

In the past few years, my daughter's gone from the coveted 00 to a plain single-digit 0 to a 2 to a 4. Soon, she may actually need a size 6. Sacre bleu! (Time to send her to a fat farm, obviously.) The thing is, a teen girl should be considered more attractive with hips and breasts, not less. Abercrombie is promoting an unrealistic ideal — why should a young woman covet the figure of an emaciated boy?

As much as Mr. Jeffries' comments disturb me (disgust might be a better word), there is a bright side to all of this.

Now, I finally have the perfect reason to boycott Abercrombie.

The New National Pastime?

Toward the end of our drive home from Vermont yesterday, we found ourselves on Route 128, the beltway that circles Boston to the North, West and South (the Atlantic Ocean is to the East). We passed the site of a new mall in the neighboring town of Wakefield. It's going to be a huge, upscale shopping center, and there are billboards out already, trying to generate excitement even though the grand opening is many months away.

The thing is, this new shopping center is located about halfway between two others, both of which have recently become bigger and more upscale with the addition of a Nordstrom. All in all, we will now have three major malls within one sixteen-mile stretch.

This seems a little unnecessary.

Really, how many malls do we need? More importantly, how much shopping do we need to do?

Apparently the answer is "a lot."

Shopping has become the national pastime. Especially for those of us with teenage daughters. I think there are several factors involved, none of them particularly positive.

Most of our friends don't go to church (or temple or mosque) together on any kind of regular basis. In fact, clergy joke about people attending church for just three occasions now: baptisms, weddings and funerals — or, more poetically, to "hatch, match and dispatch." This is definitely true for our nuclear family. So, while our forefathers and mothers might have spent Sunday at church, followed maybe by a multigenerational family dinner, we don't. Instead, we have more free time ... and less ways to fill it. 

Where do we go? To malls. And, even that isn't a family activity necessarily. These days, I tend to do a drive by, dropping the teen and friends at the shopping center and then picking them up later.

What happened to hobbies?

What happened to ballgames, bike riding, field trips?

What happened to time spent together, a cohesive family, playing a game or relaxing in front of a roaring fire?

All of this togetherness has been replaced by hunts for the perfect blue jeans, amassing collections of tank tops, shorts or sandals, loading up on costume jewelry, cosmetics and bikini briefs from Victoria's Secret. I worry about my daughter growing up in such a culture of conspicuous consumption. 

Believe me, she has plenty of clothes! She would argue that it only seems like it because her closet is so small. Be that as it may, she is not exactly needy. Or naked.

So, we continue to worship at the altar of Abercrombie's, Hollister, Aeropostale, American Eagle, H&M, and Delia's.

But shopping stimulates our economy, you may say. I beg to differ. Nearly everything for sale at the soon-to-be three malls in our immediate vicinity was manufactured in Asia. So we're supporting off-shoring and questionable labor practices. And, many of the customers buying these sweatshop imports are doing so with credit cards, paying exorbitant interest rates for goods that they don't need and that will probably be out of style before they are paid off.

This isn't true for every shopper, of course. But, I fear that it is for many.

And what do we do with all that stuff anyway? We rent outside space because we run out of room at home. Really, the self-storage industry is one of only a handful that not only weathered the recession but grew faster than inflation.

What's wrong with this picture?

I'm just as guilty as any other mom. Yes, I confess that I have bribed my daughter with shopping trips. I have paid for her affection on more than one occasion. (Way more than one. Way, way, way more.) All of this went through my mind as we drove by yet another mall. I would have discussed it with my daughter, maybe used these observations as a teachable moment. But she was in her own world, earbuds in place, listening to Pandora on her iPhone in the back seat.

Needless to say, we did not stop at any shopping centers on our way back from Vermont. Instead, we unloaded the car and my husband made a nice fire. My daughter studied for her theatre arts quiz and I finished a novel I'd started over the weekend.

Once her test preparation was complete, my daughter brought my iPad over and snuggled up next to me.

"Can we order that shirt from Forever 21 now?" she asked in the sweetest possible voice. She has an assumptive way of making these little requests sound like ultra-natural foregone conclusions. She still had credit on a gift card she received for Christmas. It would be a shame to waste it. Right?

So, at the end of the day, there we were, a cohesive family in front of a roaring fire ... shopping.

CGI Models? Abandon Hope, Girls.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about skinny models and my worries that our obsession with thin wreaks havoc on growing girls — their self-esteem, their body image, their eating (or more precisely, their lack thereof).

But, no matter how emaciated the cover girls are, I've always assumed they were real (real thin, yes, but real as in living, breathing human beings). I've deplored the celebration of twig-like bodies, but I figured there was a (teensy tiny) flesh and blood person there.

Not anymore, I guess.

The trendy department store H&M has just confessed to using a computer-generated body, topped with multiple models' heads (one-at-a-time, of course) on their website. This perfect body (for the record, my body would be perfect too, if it was made by a computer!) is colorized to match each model's skin tone. H&M calls it a "virtual mannequin" and claims that they never meant anyone to think it was real. The pose, left hand jauntily resting on hip, right arm extended down, is meant to show off the merchandise. A spokesperson said “This is not to be seen as conveying a specific ideal or body type." It is "merely a technique to show our garments.” Supposedly, the CGI figure ensures that the focus is on the clothes, not the model.

I think the focus is on a perfectly lovely body that is perfectly impossible for a mere mortal woman to obtain.

This is nothing new. The girls in the Victoria's Secret catalog sell lots of lingerie because of a flawed bit of consumer logic. "The model looks bodacious and she is wearing this $65 bra and panty set. If I wear this $65 bra and panty set, I will look bodacious too."

After all, what are they going to do? Put the lingerie on fat chicks? I think not.

But, there's still the assumption that even the most angelic of Vicky's heavenly bodies is a real-live woman. Sure, she may have won the genetic lottery, paid for cosmetic enhancements, devoted her life to Pilates, or (more likely) given up all carbohydrates for the past twenty-one years, but we're still looking at actual skin on an actual (albeit Photoshopped) body. Right?

This brings the pressure to an all-new level. Our daughters don't just have to compete with 6-foot tall 120-pound beauties. Now, they have to compete with avatars.

Unfair!

I'm disappointed. H&M is a store with cute and stylish fashion that appeals to tweens and teens (at prices that appeal to tweens and teens' moms). With this eager-to-consume audience comes responsibility. Why not show the clothes on real girls? Preferably on real girls with real bodies — strong, attractive, of course, but real.

You see, at the end of the day (or the end of my daughter's second helping of Ben & Jerry's Smores ice cream — no eating disorders here, thank you very much), the same damage is being done. Whether we are tall or short, thin or fat, or just plain average. Whether the idealized body in question is analog or digital.

We are still bound to be disappointed when we look in our own mirrors.