The Abercrombie & Fitch CEO, Mike Jeffries, hates me because I’m “fat”. I hate him because he promotes oppression, bullying and is sending the wrong message to my kids!
While I have said many times, I don’t promote obesity, I promote self worth and the ability to love the skin you are in! Big, small, short, tall, red, white, black and yellow, straight, gay, male, female…. we are all HUMANS!!! We need to stop being racist, stop being bigots and just learn to love and accept the people of this world unless and until they do things so heinous that they can no longer be considered human.
Day after day my daughter comes home in tears because someone said she was fat, or stupid, or ugly, or this or that. I often wonder where these bullies get off telling someone else that they have something to be ashamed of, that they aren’t perfect, that they don’t meet some superficial standard of what is supposed to be. I mean, I understand that bullies are out to serve one purpose, typically that is, to make themselves feel better or at least above the person whose self-esteem they are beating down.
And I’m friggen sick of it. Sick of the bullies at my kids’ schools, sick of the bullies around the world and damn sick of people like the CEO of Abercrombie and Fitch that misuse the power and success of their brand to teach others to be bigoted and bully people who are different than they are! I don’t care WHAT you are wearing when you beat down someone else’s self esteem, you are not above them… they may not have the mouth you have to fight back but I’m telling you right now, if you choose to belittle anyone you are beneath them if for no other reason than your lack of human compassion!
This guy? This rich CEO of an “In” clothing company that promotes heavily sexualized ads targeted at teenagers and apparently bulimia? I’ll let his words tell the story and you can decide. As for my family, we’ll stick with brands that appeal to our compassionate human nature, not just our waist size or social status.
Here are the 13 most ridiculous things Mike Jeffries has said over the years (Compiled by Eddie Cuffin of Elite Daily):
On being popular:
“In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids.”
On good-looking people:
“That’s why 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.
On belonging:
“A lot of people don’t belong [in our clothes], and they can’t belong.”
On being exclusive:
“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.”
On alienating people:
“You don’t alienate anybody, but you don’t excite anybody, either”
On the demographic he prefers:
“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”
On whom the company is interested in marketing to:
“Abercrombie is only interested in people with washboard stomachs who look like they’re about to jump on a surfboard”
On crossing the line:
“Listen, do we go too far sometimes? Absolutely. But we push the envelope, and we try to be funny, and we try to stay authentic and relevant to our target customer.”
On little girls’ underwear:
“People said we were cynical, that we were sexualizing little girls. But you know what? I still think those are cute underwear for little girls. And I think anybody who gets on a bandwagon about thongs for little girls is crazy. Just crazy! There’s so much craziness about sex in this country. It’s nuts! I can see getting upset about letting your girl hang out with a bunch of old pervs, but why would you let your girl hang out with a bunch of old pervs?”
On his customers:
“I don’t want our core customers to see people who aren’t as hot as them wearing our clothing.”
On people outside of his customer base:
“I really don’t care what anyone other than our target customer thinks.”
On Abercrombie’s ambiguous sexuality:
“I think that what we represent sexually is healthy. It’s playful. It’s not dark. It’s not degrading! And it’s not gay, and it’s not straight, and it’s not black, and it’s not white. It’s not about any labels. That would be cynical, and we’re not cynical! It’s all depicting this wonderful camaraderie, friendship, and playfulness that exist in this generation and, candidly, does not exist in the older generation.”
On his personal style:
“Dude, I’m not an old fart who wears his jeans up at his shoulders.”
Wow! This guy is a complete idiot. It amazes me that he can say these things and people will still shop at this store. Especially people that don’t fit his “demographic” of young, hip, cool and “in” I would love to see Abercrombie, and any other company with these values boycotted to the point of extinction! Thanks for posting. I had only heard a little of what Jeffries said prior to reading this. I second your emotion! xx #sitsblogging