You’ve probably heard about the CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch, who last week decided to let the world know that he’s a huge jerk. In a nutshell, he expressed his feelings that only the “cool” and “good-looking” kids should wear his products, and that’s why the store only offers clothing up to a certain size. Because in case you didn’t get the memo, “cool” and “good-looking” are synonymous with “not fat.”
I’ve never shopped in an Abercrombie & Fitch store, even when I was at my smallest, because the stores give off that “only for certain [skinny] people” vibe (they also give off that “drowning in cologne vibe” that offended my sense of smell) that made me feel uncomfortable and unwelcome. So Mike Jeffries didn’t lose a customer in me, because he never had me to begin with. But I hope he lost a whole bunch of other customers when he opened his mouth. After all, there’s no better way to express your disgust at his opinions than to stop giving him your money.
He’s really just one man (although a rich and somewhat powerful one) expressing his limited and ignorant opinion. But there are a couple of interesting things about this brouhaha that I want to talk about before we all forget his name forever. First, this isn’t really about Mike Jeffries hating fat people. It’s specifically about him hating fat women. Why do I say that? Because he offers up to a size Large in shirts (and a whopping size 10 in pants) for women, whereas men are able to buy shirts up to an XXL. So you can be fat and shop at A&F if you’re a guy, but please, no female fatties! Thanks for putting us in our place, Mr. Jeffries. (I find it fascinating that he doesn’t realize how much more money he could be making if he would widen his selection – after all, the average American woman is a size 14. But I guess hating fat people is more important to him than expanding his customer base. Fine by me!)
The second issue I want to talk about is fat bullying and shaming in general. Of course this is something that’s on my mind a lot. Every day I read stories of people who are shamed, bullied, and even assaulted (verbally, emotionally, and physically) simply because of the size of their bodies. It’s both fascinating and appalling to me that some people feel that being fat makes you less – less worth of respect, less worth of body autonomy, less of a human being. Fat is really the last frontier when it comes to socially acceptable bullying, mockery, and shaming. Entire sitcom plot lines and movie scripts are built around the premise that fat people are here to be made fun of, are “other,” are mainly just good for a cruel laugh. Read any article on the internet that features a fat person (especially a fat woman), and I don’t care if that person just cured cancer or got elected to the Supreme Court, a large portion of the comments will focus negatively on that person’s size. What really boggles my mind is how so many of these bullies don’t understand the basic science of being fat – that we just are. If it was so “easy” and “simple” to be thin (as many, many thin people maintain), wouldn’t we all be thin? Why would we choose a body type that gets us bullied and shamed on a daily basis?
In conclusion, I hereby proclaim Mike Jeffries the Mayor of Crazy Town. Thankfully, his term is just about up. Soon he’ll be nothing more than a footnote in history, remembered not as a man who clothed a generation of “cool,” “good-looking” kids, but as a jerk and a bully. Nice legacy, Mike!
