There are people standing inside Abercrombie & Fitch stores throughout America at this very moment.
They have found their way into its chilled, cologne-infused, overly sonorous interior because they want to be there.
They choose to be there.
I’m not talking about a teenage girl flipping through a pile of stretchy jeans or the teenage boy standing beside a rack of long-sleeve T-shirts, imagining what the teenage girl would look like without her stretchy jeans.
I’m talking to adults. Hard-boiled men and women who pay their own phone bills and know how to cook a steak.
These men and women are wandering the interiors of Abercrombie & Fitch stores at this very moment because they appreciate and desire the wares the store’s purveyor has to offer.
They have come seeking T-shirts with corporate labels emblazoned across chests that will simultaneously endorse a corporation that produces the clothing in sweatshops around the world while also pronouncing something of import about the wearer:
“I purchase clothing at Abercrombie & Fitch because I like it. Know this.”
Perhaps they didn’t hear the CEO of this company declare his sole allegiance to attractive customers by stating that “a lot of people don’t belong in our clothes, and they can’t belong. 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.”
Maybe they missed the lawsuit won by a woman with a prosthetic limb who was required to work in the stockroom because she “did not fit the brand’s All-American image.”
It’s possible that they didn’t notice that the teenage models featured in their clothing ads aren’t actually wearing any clothing.
With blinders firmly affixed, they exchange money earned from hours spent in crammed cubicles and broiling over short-order grills for the opportunity to broadcast to the world that they willingly spent a portion of their precious Sunday afternoon and a portion of their even more precious paycheck in an Abercrombie & Fitch store.
The world never ceases to amaze me.
