Cat

Abercrombie

I'm not even going to get into the racism and sexism that A&F uses to market it's clothes. The following disjointed post is an imprint of my ongoing thinking on what is going on with our culture. Consider the following.

"In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids," he says. "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. 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." -Mike Jeffries "The man behind Abercrombie & Fitch"

This quote says allot. Here's what I get out of it.
1. Everyone wants to be a cool kid, ergo, everyone wants to be physically attractive, powerful and have lots of sex. Even if this is unconscious, I think it's probably true. However, does that mean that is what people should aspire to? Did Ghandi get laid every night? Was Jesus worried about being hip?

2. They are exclusive. Lie. They market themselves as exclusive, so that they are desirable. Does that mean that only cool kids buy A&F, or Hollister, or whatever?

3. If you try and be everything for everyone, you will become vanilla. This is also true. You can't be everything and still be vital, right? This is certainly true for art, literature, etc etc. But is it true for religion? The core of most religions teaching is just the opposite, inclusion, understanding. How can this be bridged? How can these both be so?

That's all I have for now. comments welcome. :-)

Head Turn Exercise

Some stuff

More to come. Click to enlarge.