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| If you look like this you must have lots of friends |
The news was full of weight-related stories last week. Governor
Chris Christie had lap band surgery to lose weight despite telling Letterman
he’s “the healthiest fat guy you’ve ever seen”.
Also this week, Mike Jeffries the CEO of Abercrombie came under fire when
he explained why their stores do not carry larger sizes.
Let’s start with Christie, the last time I wrote he told
Barbara Walters it was “ridiculous”
that people found him too fat to be president. Next thing you know, he
has lap band surgery and in an effort to keep it secret even had the surgeon
come to his office for the pre-surgery medical visits. The secret gets out and Christie
says his motivation was that he wanted to be there for his kids. Oh and there just so happens to be a
presidential race in 2016. This is a guy who had a doughnut on Letterman and
mac and cheese during the soft foods post-op phase were these "for his kids" too?
And then there’s Mike Jeffries. I should really congratulate
him. I have thought more about Abercrombie this week than ever before. There is an Abercrombie store close to where I get my hair blonded; I only know this because of the line of teenyboppers monopolizing the sidewalk. Perhaps, if I were cooler, I would get on that line. Their CEO told Salon magazine:
“We hire good-looking
people in our stores. Because good-looking people attract other good-looking
people, and we want to market to cool, good-looking people. We don’t market to
anyone other than that.”
In case
you’re already nauseated it gets worse…
“In every school there are
the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids.” 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.”
Abercrombie only goes up to a women’s size 10, for men they have
larger sizes to account for athletic, big guys so that’s fair, right? Aside
from exclusionary this sounds silly in a country of larger people but this is definitely not the only clothing brand with their sizes capped. If you walk up and
down 5th Avenue, where the store I mentioned is located, this is far
from the only 12-less store. However, I’m still a little confused. How does
being small indicate that you have “lots of friends”? Maybe they ask questions
at the door, thus the line. Can you imagine a scale and a questionnaire to
assess weight, friend volume and All-Americaness prior to entry?
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| Bad plastic surgery seems to be "cool" |
We can’t get around it; most of us care about and notice size
differences. When I compare these two examples, one really rubs me the wrong
way and it’s the Christie situation that bothers me a lot more. For years he
has said his weight is not an issue or doesn’t get in the way of him doing his
job. With the possibility that he may run in 2016 it became an issue to the
voting public. Christie sneaks around, gets surgery and when the fat cat is out
of the bag he cites doing this for his children. How about saying you realized you needed to take action? Then again, I guess sneaky is
more acceptable than 400 pounds when it comes to the White House. As far as
Abercrombie, I can guarantee you that the line snaking out of their 5th
Avenue store is just as large, despite the press, this week. Sadly, there are a
lot of young people who want to be that cool kid. Though I can guarantee CEO Mike
was never one of them, maybe that’s where some of this stems from.
Did you hear
about these two stories? Which do you find more troublesome?
