a&f update
so it seems that a&f, in response to pressure from many groups, in particular one called 80-20, a&f has pulled the shirts from the market. awesome. the turn-around on this whole issue is pretty impressive.
i think that there is also a protest in columbus today at some point which is cool
the whole debaucle was written up in the sf gate as well as on cnn. one of the best lines is from hampton carney a PR guy with Paul Wilmot Communications (which is somehow related to a&f) who said “we personally thought Asians would love this t-shirt”.
one final note. this is yet another line of apparrel from a company, that at least in terms of the values they purvey, is the most evil company in the garment industry. it is important not to forget their “drinking 101” adverts that were slammed by MADD. i don’t find this surprising as i would argue that a&f is largely worn by white, upper-middle-class american college students who, statistically, lead other groups in terms of dangerous drinking behavior (see report cited in salon article previously mentioned in this web log). also note a&f’s shameless exploitation of teen sexuality in its marketing. it’s not that i have a problem with teen sexuality (see yesterdays interesting salon article), i just think that sexuality, teen or otherwise, should be defined personally and not be culture or cleverly crafted mass media. i think we can all think of examples of what happens when sexuality is defined culturally *cough* female genital mutilation *cough*, *cough* taliban *cough*. so, racial insensitivity comes as no surprise to me. it’s not so much the insensitivity that bothers me. people fuck up. it’s the blatant attempt to profit off of it (and at $25 a pop, no less).
oh, here’s one of the shirts in question:
