Thoughts on Thursday {Pressure to be ‘Pretty’}

I know this is marriage related, but hey if you have kids well then it is….so yeah.

We see it everywhere, on TV, in the movies, in magazines, we are consistently being told what pretty is, how skinny we need told to be, and so on.  I know I’m a little slow to respond here but mostly that is because I wasn’t sure I had anything to say about this publicly. However its been a few weeks since this was broadcast and I’m still upset about it so I thought I would share. Did you all see the recent reports about the CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch’s stance on who, and specifically what size of people where their clothes? Here are a few quotes from a recent artical on Elite Daily that re-published quotes from a 2006 Salon article.

“He doesn’t want larger people shopping in his store, he wants thin and beautiful people,” Lewis said. “He doesn’t want his core customers to see people who aren’t as hot as them wearing his clothing. People who wear his clothing should feel like they’re one of the ‘cool kids.”

“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. 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,” he told Salon.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME!?!?!

As if there isn’t enough pressure out there we need someone just straight out saying this??? Umm no! Now I will admit I’ve NEVER shopped at A&F, yes really never, and here is why:

• I’ve never liked their 1/2 naked people advertising campaign (if your selling clothes shouldn’t your models be wearing them?!?)
• I can’t afford them.
• Their stores give me a headache just walking by (from the pefume smell.)
• When I was looking in the windows in high school (when I was TINY) I was pretty sure I would be a size large….dumb.
• Now this ^^^

Without going on a complete rant, why would we support a company like this? I was excited to hear about students taking a stand and even protesting the company (reported in People Magazine.) All of this has prompted an apology from the company that you can find in this Huffington Post artical:

 “We look forward to continuing this dialogue and taking concrete steps to demonstrate our commitment to anti-bullying in addition to our ongoing support of diversity and inclusion. We want to reiterate that we sincerely regret and apologize for any offense caused by comments we have made in the past which are contrary to these values.”

This ‘apology’ is honestly the most upsetting part of this to me.  These comments were initialy made back in 2006, 7 years ago, and only recently brought to light again. Talk is cheap, if you were really sorry as stated above you would have made changes along time ago and yet on their website (I just checked) girls pants only go up to size 10 and shirts only to a size L. Why didn’t you take these ‘concrete steps’ you are promising before. This isn’t the first firestorm you have cause about the exact same topic….

So yeah, as I climb off my soap box I would just like to state that my daughter will never wear A&F clothing, she woudln’t have anyway honestly but not I will make double sure.

So what do you think of this whole controversy? Think is being blown out of proportion, agree with me 100%? Either way I want to hear from you.