Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Ah, Sweet Schadenfreude!

Seems Abercrombie and Fitch is a little bit embarrassed. Have they realized their "magalogs" full of pictures of people not wearing their clothes and articles about excessive drunken escapades were just sleazy trash? Nope.

Well, maybe they've figured out that a lot of their current ads do some of the same things, emphasize sexuality in inappropriate ways. Nope again.

It's that policy they have of making sure that only pretty people with nice teeth work out in the front of the store where customers can see them while average-looking schlumps have to stay in the back and process stock and may not talk to customers, right? 'Fraid not. 

Surely they've finally understood that selling padded swimsuit tops on items designed for elementary schoolers is wrong in so many ways we've had to posit a multitude of other universes just to contain the list of them. Nah.

What's embarrassed the previously unembarassable A&F is that their clothing is being worn by the cast of MTV's animal wildlife behavior show, The Jersey Shore. A spokesperson for the clothing company said that A&F would pay Shore cast members not to wear their clothing on the air. Some thoughts occur:

 --  The Jersey Shore cast members sound like they'd fail a casting call for a Planet of the Apes movie if their behavior is somehow worse than the the crudity, shallow appearance obsession and near clone-ish uniformity that's previously been associated with A&F's self-presentation.

-- The Shore cast should take A&F's money and then switch to Hollister clothes. Hollister, of course, is also made by A&F but bears the different brand name, "Well, hey, you never said anything about Hollister," would be a good defense in court.

-- After taking the money for not wearing Hollister, they should then buy cheap knockoffs of the A&F clothes. Not only would cheap knockoffs be much more appropriate for cast members, they would cost less and still meet the letter of the agreement.

And we should all laugh and laugh and laugh as we see that in this instance, karma wins.

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