11.07.2005
Girlcott prevails, A&F pull controversial shirts
This is actually pretty amazing. A group of teenage girls got together and brought down an Abercrombie & Fitch product line. Not sure where I stand with this. On the one hand, it's hard to rally behind t-shirts that say "Who needs brains when you have these?" and "I make you look fat." On the other hand, I find it hard to support censorship of anything. Surely there are more offensive t-shirts out there? Why stop with these? (Note that A&F pocketed a 31% increase in sales in October -- apparently not all girls were girlcotting -- and then decided to pull the shirts.)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Well, I wouldn't want my daughter/sister/mother/grandmother/girlfriend/wife to wear one, and I probably wouldn't think very highly of any stranger wearing one, and the "girlcott" strikes me as reasonable. I think we should start worrying when the government says you're not allowed to write stupid things on shirts.
That said, my favorite offensive shirt is the one that says beneath an image of Shakespeare's head "Prose before hoes" (and don't any of you dramatists come to me whining about how he wrote in blank verse; you know damn well that many of his plays contained prose, especially when the characters were drunk).
I wouldn't call it censorship. I'd call it capitalism at its best: the market decides what is or is not acceptable.
Abercrombie didn't *have* to pull the line; they did it to please the almighty consumer and protect their profit margins.
Go girlcott!
Post a Comment