Kimberly Emerson

Honestly.  I take a small break to go to Disneyland with my family, and while I’m not looking, someone says this:

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.  We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends.  A lot of people don’t belong, and they can’t belong.  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.  You don’t alienate people, but you don’t excite anybody either.

Mike Jeffries, CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch

Mike Jeffries, CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch and self-appointed arbiter of coolness.

I can’t be everywhere, people.  As much as I might like to, it is not within my capabilities to stand in front of every person alive and say, “Think about what you’re going to say.  I mean, really think, before you let the words come out of your mouth.  Thirty years from now, will you still be happy you said this?  Better yet, tomorrow, will you still be happy you said this?”  But maybe I will have to try harder, if this sort of thing is going to happen when I don’t.

Mr. Jeffries gave this speech when someone asked why Abercrombie & Fitch only carries women’s clothing up to a size 10.  The comments underneath the article ran the gamut from irritated to enraged.  Once or twice someone tried to defend him, saying that businesses are allowed to go after niche markets.  After all, someone pointed out, Lane Bryant only carries large sizes and doesn’t try to cater to smaller-sized people.  That argument didn’t last long, when another reader pointed out that Abercrombie & Fitch carries men’s sizes in XL and XXL.  Just not women’s.  Sure, some stores carve out a special wedge of the market they want to serve.  But if you’re carrying a whole range of men’s sizes and a smattering of women’s, I’m not sure what you’ve carved out.  Not a wedge.  Not even a quadrilateral.  More like a truncated hexagon with a tumor.  (If it makes anyone feel better, anecdotal internet evidence says the men’s sizes aren’t all that roomy, either.)

I’m trying to sort out what about this quote disturbs me the most, and it’s proving a difficult endeavor.  The weight issue?  Maybe, but he’s hardly the first one to follow that theory.  The inherent sexism, once you find out the facts?  Perhaps.  The “cool kid” ideal?  It makes me cringe, but mostly for its inaccuracy.  As one of the readers pointed out, cool and popular kids don’t usually come with a great attitude.  They usually run the gamut from bored to surly, and associate only with those considered socially worthy.  I knew some people in high school who broke the mold, who had a knack for making friends with everyone.  To base an entire store on them seems like a dicey business strategy, because there were so few of them.  Even if that is the goal, though, and Mr. Jeffries just wants these few fabulous customers, I dare say he isn’t going to get them, because they spent time with friends of all shapes and sizes and they wouldn’t enjoy shopping at a store that “candidly” doesn’t want their friends.

In the end, though, the most depressing thing is what it tells me about Mr. Jeffries himself.

Exclude people from shopping in your store?  Fine.  Many other stores will be only too glad to pick up where you so willingly leave off.  But some quick research told me that Mr. Jeffries is 68 years old.  Read his quote again, with that in mind.  I’ll wait.

(Cue hold music – Killing me softly with his words, killing me softly, with his words, telling my whole life, with his song…)

Depressing, isn’t it?  What we have here, my friends, is a senior citizen who still wants to hang out with the cool kids in high school.

Some comments on the websites suggested that Mr. Jeffries didn’t make the cut in high school, and now longed to surround himself with the popular crowd that rejected him.  Perhaps the opposite is true – he reigned supreme as one of the popular kids, and since high school life has disappointed him.

For most of us, the fascination with those people wears off.  Maybe it’s the leveling influence of college.  (I went to a university with tens of thousands of students.  If you worked hard, you might manage to achieve popularity within a certain sector, but the rest of the school would still be too busy to care about you.)  Maybe it’s the mobility of people around the country; the average person now moves eleven times in a lifetime, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, limiting the amount of time you have to get invested in any one group of people.  The constant barrage of media attention on the lives of the rich and attention-hungry gives us a national set of “cool kids” to look at, which might reduce the standing of those mere mortals in our zip code.  Perhaps attending reunions and realizing that eventually all the popular kids will put on weight and go bald destroys the allure.

Any way you look at it, however, for most of us, the very idea of coolness has an expiration date.  We wake up one morning and realize that we can’t necessarily tell the “cool” people from the uncool.  Teenagers do not want to hang out with us, and we don’t care.  (Some of us might even prefer it that way.)  Not this guy.  It matters to him.

Judging by his marketing strategies, this guy has a very particular group of teenagers he’s interested in impressing.  Maybe the most shocking thing of all is that it took the American public this long to become completely disgusted with the man.    (At this point, even the one blog arguing that he had a good marketing strategy noted, “No one wants to look like a Mike Jeffries.”)  Take a look at some of the other things he and his store have done to bring in the cool kids over the years:

• Established a “Look Policy” that, among other things, necessitated making the employee with a prosthetic arm work solely in the back room.
• Marketed thong underwear and padded bras for little girls.  (Bonus points to them, for creating an issue where One Million Moms and I can actually agree.  Don’t worry, they fixed it – the padded bras no longer are sized for 7-year-olds.  Now you have to be at least ten.  Tell your seven-year-olds not to panic though, because they can probably still find the thongs marked “eye candy” and “wink wink.”)
• Made non-white employees clean the store or work in the back room while their white counterparts sold the clothes, and declined to hire someone because “we already have too many Filipinos in that store.”

I had trouble finding a copy of the Look Policy.  The closest I found was a website describing how to get hired at Abercrombie & Fitch.  (I have no proof that this is accurate, but the information correlates with all the verbiage from the lawsuits over the Look Policy.)  Short version – have 2% bodyfat, say “Dude” a lot, and wear Abercrombie & Fitch clothing.

Funny – Mr. Jeffries is terribly worried about being exclusive.  In his world, “exclusive” seems to translate to “everyone looks identical.”

He is certainly doing his best to make the brand more exclusive, by shutting down 71 stores last year and a projected 180 in the next three years.  By contrast, he’s opening more stores in international markets.  Perhaps the brand does best in countries where Mr. Jeffries doesn’t speak the language.

Do yourself a favor today.  Go buy yourself a new tank top at Goodwill and donate the remaining $80.00 that you didn’t have to spend on it to your favorite charity.  Be beautiful on the inside.  You may not be cool in Mr. Jeffries’ eyes, but you will be in mine.

Kimberly has never been cool and probably never will be.  She cries a lot, but she saves a fortune in Botox.

Tags: Abercrombie & Fitch, business, cool, discrimination, Goodwill, Look Policy, marketing, Mike Jeffries, One Million Moms, popularity, racism, sexism