The Only Thing Worse Than Abercrombie & Fitch Is This Anti-Abercrombie & Fitch Movement

Apparently the sack of crap CEO of awful mall store Abercrombie and Fitch, Mike Jeffries, said he doesn't like it when you fuglies shop at his stores. He said this to Salon back in 2006 but apparently it took seven years for his mean girl comments to set off a firestorm of outrage on the social media. Your Facebook and Twitter feeds are probably filled right now with righteous indignation over A&F's policy to only have their sweatshops make lady clothes in size 10 or smaller. Even former Cheers' star Kirstie Alley (not Diane, the other one) has decided to boycott this purveyor of homogenized suburban conspicuous consumption because it refuses to cater to the conspicuous consuming of homogenized suburbia's larger ladies.

And while yr Wonket celebrates the curves of all women because we once saw a Dove commercial telling us that all women are beautiful just as God made them and so long as they continue to purchase Dove-brand beauty products , it should be noted that the anti-A&F movement is a really misguided effort seeking redress of an incredibly First World problem .

Protestors gathered outside the retailer’s Michigan Avenue store in Chicago Monday, outraged about the store’s not carrying clothes in a size 14, the size worn by the average U.S. woman. Plus-size shoppers now make up 67 percent of U.S. consumers.

“It’s body discrimination, and it’s bullying and it encourages bullying,” Cali Lindstrom, a former Abercrombie & Fitch customer, told ABC News.

The backlash is growing online on Twitter and Facebook, and several petitions on Change.org urge people not to shop at Abercrombie & Fitch until the New Albany, Ohio-based retailer starts carrying larger sizes.

Yeah, so about this "bullying" thing. It doesn't seem like former Abercrombie & Fitch customer Cali Lindstrom really gets this whole bullying concept. Bullying, in the context of public policy and social change, isn't like some schoolyard jerk telling you that there's epidermis on your nose and then laughing at you. It's more like, for instance, when a group of kids pins down a weaker, emotionally fragile kid and cuts his hair against his will to teach him a lesson. Bullying, as the term is currently defined, is abuse that often leads to suicide or deep emotional trauma. Can any reasonable person conclude that a mall store refusing to carry your size rises to the level of bullying? No, they cannot. Fortunately, the anti-A&F movement is filled with completely unreasonable people.

Nicole Patrick, who was among the protestors in Chicago, said she is hurt by the exclusion.

“As a woman who cannot shop in Abercrombie, it’s extremely hurtful to hear that I’m not cool,” she said. “I think I’m really cool and so does my daughter.”

Grown adults responsible for the care and upbringing of children probably should try to be mature enough to not take the comments of a corporate CEO personally. Also if you ever use the phase “I think I’m really cool and so does my daughter” then you are by definition not cool at all. So uncool are you that you are less cool then anyone who liked that completely awful song about "girls in Abercrombie & Fitch" from like 1998.

But here's the larger point: Even if Mike Jeffries decides that his company should make larger-sized products, you still shouldn't shop at his shitty stores. Your hard-won right to purchase overpriced size-18 dark wash skinny jeans from Mike Jeffries means you'll be buying a product that was probably made by underpaid sweatshop labor in some godforsaken third world death trap factory. No, literally. In 2010, 28 workers making A&F clothes were killed in a Bangladeshi sweatshop fire . The company was inducted into the International Labor Rights Forum Hall of Shame before that incident. Granted, being burned up in a fire while trying to earn a living isn't at hurtful as some dickbag CEO besmirching the coolness of Chicago moms, but maybe we should think about demanding that companies selling $90 blue jeans provides decent pay and workplace safety for their employees before we fret about whether stores are making American consumers feel "hurt" while at the mall.

[ ABC News ]