A Little Prep-Talk For Ya

Abercrombie & Fitch. Kids, teens, and young adults love it. Parents love to hate it, or at least the advertising that is. In fact, if you didn't already know, police actually confiscated two enormous promotional images from Lynnhaven Mall back in February of 2008 after receiving numerous complaints from parents. That's right, Virginia made headline news across the country with creative titles such as "Abercrombie ad too risqué in Virginia." In all honesty though, you have to ask yourself if these companies are sending the right messages to today's impressionable youngsters.

Take the above picture for example. Calm down, no you're not going insane, you are indeed looking at a pair of shirtless twins. What's more, they seem to be returning from a rousing game of baseball... wearing only their perfectly sculpted abs and a pair of signature Abercrombie & Fitch jeans.... that seem to be riding extremely low.

Now let's place this image in the middle of the store. Imagine the constant THUMP THUMP of the bass in the relentless techno as you gaze upon this picture, blown up to fill an entire wall. Oh, and by the way, you're thirteen years old. Pictures like this, and definitely worse than this, frequent the walls and shelves of every Abercrombie & Fitch store across the United States. The corporation markets to all ages (take for instance the Abercrombie Kids website), and you're hard pressed to find a time when kids under the age of fifteen are not perusing the shelves.

I'm not sitting here trying to say that Abercrombie & Fitch is a bad establishment however. I mean, they have good quality clothing... though at exorbitant prices. In that light I'd encourage anyone to shop there. But the CEOs and marketing specialists aren't stupid. They know who frequents the establishment, and they make the choice to continue forcing these photos down the throats of anyone that so much as walks past the front of the store. What is this telling kids about gender? Beyond that, what is it telling them about society's expectations of them as either males or females? And why was one store in Virginia the only one, out of the 353 locations in the United States, to find a problem with the pictures? I mean I'm sure you can spot the issue yourself if you take a look.