Abercrombie and Fitch and the Delusions of Mike Jeffries

To Mike Jeffries:

I know who you are. You are the CEO of one of the most recognizable and desirable clothing retailers in the nation. Your products live in the closets of millions of young people. Your ideals live in their minds and worm their way into their hearts.

You have no idea who I am. You will never meet me. I will remain relatively inconsequential and insignificant in your life. As an individual, you have little impact on my life, and I have little on yours. 

But I am part of a larger group of people, and we are certainly not insignificant or unworthy of recognition. My experience in life is a microcosm of the whole. A snapshot of what many men and women experience when their beautiful, divinely ordained and created lives smash up against the perversions and illusions constructed to shame their bodies, minds and souls. 

You sit at the helm of a multi-million dollar marketing machine, and you are completely aware of the impact that you have on popular culture. You know that your approval of marketing, in-store merchandising and presentation of your brand can impact and define the choices, desires and ultimately, the self-image of an impressionable group of people. You know your power, and you exploit it in the name of exclusivity. You channel it into a falsely constructed reality that propagates the message that image, thinness, sexiness and improperly defined masculinity are the keys to happiness, success, and value in life.

I spent years of my teenage life skulking through your store, the bass beat of dance music reverberating through my body as I picked at piles of paper-thin t-shirts, slim-cut v-neck sweaters and low-rise jeans, searching desperately for my size. I was disappointed every time. I remember wiping hot tears from my eyes as my friends hauled off piles of clothes to the dressing room to try on, and I stood outside, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot, staring at highly sexualized pictures of flawless teenage girls and men dripping with washboard abs and deep v-cuts. I purchased one item of clothing from your store in 2003, when I had unhealthily reached a size that your store actually sold. I wore it once before it fell apart in the wash. I have since wandered through your myriad of different stores and labels, and found myself entranced and drawn in to your clever marketing that made me wish I was prettier, thinner, sexier and worth more than the little I felt as I looked around your cleverly constructed universe of image-driven perfection. You made me feel ashamed of everything I am. And you do that to boys, girls, men and women, each day, out of a desire for profit, influence and cultural relevance.

I have known people who have worked for your company. I have seen the way they obsess over fulfilling the company standard for appearance. I have worked for one of your competitors that markets toward a more inclusive market, and felt confident, comfortable and supported in my work environment. But I have not once felt welcome in your stores, even when I could purchase and wear clothes you sold. 

To you, I am not cool. I am not attractive. I am not all-American with a great attitude. I don't have a lot of friends. I don't belong. I am excluded. I am totally vanilla. I am large. I am not thin. I am not beautiful. I am not someone to be targeted in a marketing campaign. I am not worth your money, time or service. I am not a person. I am undesirable  You don't even want me setting foot in your store for fear I will mar the image you have worked to so carefully cultivate. And I am only one of millions that have been classified as such by you.

The thing is, I am a 29 year old woman who knows the difference between truth and deception. I have the skills to dig myself out of feeling like a worthless piece of garbage because of media messaging. But that 15-year old girl you target as a customer for Hollister, or that 19-year old burgeoning man that you seek to draw through the doors of Abercrombie probably do not have those skills. You know that. You know that your definition of cool, sexy and valuable is seeping into their minds and hearts, and that you can potentially win the war for their dollars and ultimately, their self-worth. You know exactly what you are doing. 

What you don't know, and don't care to acknowledge, is that I am a person. A human. I definitely don't fit your standards of beauty and social worth. But I am a wife. I am a friend. I am a daughter. I am a sister. I am a teacher. I am created in His divine image. I am a woman. I am of infinite value and worth that is completely independent of your marketing campaign. You think you can define me by my height, weight and body shape, and others by their skin colors and nationalities, but you ignore everything that makes me who I truly am. But here is the key-I am also a consumer. And as a believer in the free market and enterprise, I know that a consumer has the power.

I will do everything in my power to not only encourage people to read your comments and personal ideals before they shop at your stores but also help people to reexamine their standards of beauty and social acceptance. When we break this entire mess of your insulting and demeaning comments and insinuations down to the most basic level, it lies in a desperate need to be culturally and socially dominant through shaming. As consumers, we can reject this method of marketing. 

You will likely go on to continue making millions of dollars as people throw dollar after dollar at you while chasing image and perfection. But I and others will go on to make sure that consumers know exactly what they are buying when they buy your products. They are buying misogyny. They are buying body shaming. They are buying unrealistic standards of beauty. They are buying bullying. They are buying a membership into a club of false exclusivity. They are part-owners in the campaign to diminish the worth of those outside of narrowly defined standards of acceptability. 

You are only a part of a much larger problem. There are countless companies and people who have the same vision and end goal as you. But you are so open about your beliefs and desire to be uber-exclusive, that you serve as a wonderful primer for people to learn the power of consumers educating themselves and rejecting a shameful and damaging message. 

I am a person. I am of infinite value of worth. Your success is ultimately fleeting. But the damage you inflict along the way to the top of the crumbling castle of social competition will not be ignored.

We are all capable of so much more than being looked at.

For more on Mike Jeffries and the vision and tactics of Abercrombie and it's subsidiaries:

http://www.businessinsider.com/abercrombie-wants-thin-customers-2013-5

http://abcnews.go.com/US/lawsuit-outlines-abercrombie-fitchs-ceo-michael-jeffries-rules/story?id=17519006#.UYqQ8LU4t8E

http://www.salon.com/2006/01/24/jeffries/

It's Not About the Thigh Gap

It's not about the thigh gap. 

How many of you have seen pictures like these on Pinterest lately? Yeah, they make me want to punch someone. I thought about blowing these images up throughout my entire workout today. I hate this obsession with the thigh gap.

Today marked day one of being back in the gym on a regular basis. Let me be completely honest, I wish I did not have to go. But Operation Baby is at least partially contingent on improving my overall health, which includes and necessitates regular workouts. But it's not about the thigh gap. I don't want that, nor will I ever have it. I have the legs of an Italian grape stomping woman. It's who I am. But apparently, by today's standards, I am not enough, because I don't have a thigh gap. Screw the thigh gap. I want to be healthy, and for me that picture looks nothing like the pictures I see of women all around me. Needless to say, my workout today was a little emotionally charged.

I have a love-hate relationship with the gym. The love part comes from the fact that when I am working out regularly, I feel fabulous, both mentally and physically. I am healthier, in a holistic sense. It has been a wonderful aspect of my life in the past. The hate part comes from a variety of experiences, and that fabulous mental script of inadequacy that runs through my mind the entire time I am there. Let me clarify.

When I lived in Colorado, I worked out at 24-hour Fitness for a few months before I moved. Every time I went there, I saw them. Those people who come to the gym as part of the gym-rat culture. You know they are there multiple hours per day. They always look like they have been lubed up with baby oil. Their workout clothes cost more than the equipment they are working out with. Women in full make-up and jewelry with rhinestone blinged "sexy" scrawled across their velour-clad butts. Listen, I am all for people being healthy and working out. But I seriously have a hard time handling it when people come into the gym, give me a look like, "hey chunkers, you don't belong here," and then sashay away to lift 5 pound weights while they stick their chest out for the Arnold Schwarzenegger wanna-be across the room. I know some of this is mental, but there is a lot of judging that happens at the gym. I am trying really hard to live by the mantra of, "you are here to get healthy, and nobody else matters."  

The mental script of inadequacy is the other part of the gym that I really hate. Egged on by the very real judgmental looks that can be thrown my way by spandex-clad women as I huff and puff on the treadmill or the elliptical (yeah, I may be going at a snail's pace, but I'm going!)  in my oversize basketball shorts and t-shirt, I begin hearing those annoying little thoughts (Brene Brown calls them Gremlins) that love to kill my motivation. "You're wasting your time." "Go home, chubby." Or my favorite, "You're not thin enough to show your face here." Gotta love that one. I'm working on beating those down in my brain like a whack-a-mole game with my aforementioned mantra.

The gym that I go to now is our local Rec Center. And it's great. It caters to a wide cross-section of people, so in the mornings when I go, I encounter a lot of cute mamas trying to lose the baby weight and older gentleman that have a penchant for working out in jeans and flannel shirts. It's like a gym full of Al Borland's. I feel minimally judged there, and that is really nice. Plus, with our insurance discount, it is incredibly affordable, and they offer a ton of classes at no extra charge. 

So this is what happened today. I went to the gym at 7:30, did an hour of cardio, lifted for 25 minutes, felt really great, and came home to make my giant green drink for breakfast. I sat down at the computer, made the mistake of going to Pinterest, and was whacked in the face with my least-favorite internet craze, Fitspiration. I seriously hate things like this.

I know some people find these motivating, but I believe their end goal (even if not the original intent) is shaming women into hating the body they have. It's not about health, it's about appearance. Let's take a woman, chop off her head and anything that makes her a person, and show only the parts of her body that we as a culture focus on to decide whether or not she is attractive. 

The lowest weight I have ever been since puberty is 135 pounds. I was a size 4-6, was working out insane amounts each day, weighing myself every morning and evening, and not eating well or nearly enough to truly sustain health, all to be what I thought I needed to be for someone else. I felt like crap. The best I have ever felt was closer to 150, working out because I loved how I felt by alternating the gym with walking, hiking and enjoying the outdoors. I ate a well-balanced diet chock-full of fresh foods, and felt amazing. I was comfortable with me, I was comfortable in my size 8 jeans, and I was the healthiest I have ever been. But my stomach never looked like that. I never saw my hipbones. I never had a "thigh gap" (apparently enough of a rage with young women that Rush Limbaugh brought up his concern about it on his show the other week). Seriously, look thigh-gap up on Pinterest and see what you get. Oh, and I am only 5 feet tall. To the world, popular culture, and media-driven standards, I was still fat. In reality, I was muscular, toned, fit, healthy and loving life. The standards and images we perpetuate as women (particularly online and at the gym) are not about health in many cases-they are about image. For those who want to learn some more about this, Beauty Redefined has some fascinating research on the subject.

I am going to keep working out every day and making awesome choices about what I choose to fuel my body with, because my health, my fertility and my future children are worth it. I will learn to deal with the occasional judge-y attitudes of people at the gym, and I will self-filter these unattainable and unhealthy body standards that are all around me. The only thing that matters is how I feel, and how I improve my own personal health. To anyone who is struggling with the same thing-whether you feel underweight, overweight, or you simply dislike where you are right now, know that you are not alone, and that it is about being healthy-not if you have a thigh gap in your skinny jeans. Here's to health.