I fucking hate when magazines have “best and worst beach bodies”, aka a chance to fucking body shame and fat shame people. Just once I want to see someone buck the system and parody that shit- put every confident, beautiful, person of /every size/ on the ‘best bodies’ page and then have a ‘worst beach bodies’ page and have it be BLANK.
(Source: oescritor)
(Source: deanplton)
(Source: gwendoikari)
(Source: sfranciscolover)
To be fair…
That’s basically it. I don’t know the name of the guy (guys?) who put together this Fitch the Homeless thing, but I think I’d probably like to smack ‘em in the jaw. I get the point, I think. Captain Abercrombie says that his clothes are for cool people. So these guys (I looked it up, it’s two guys) decide to prove him wrong by… giving clothes away to homeless people. (???) Hm. Okay.
Wait, no. Not okay. Opposite of okay.
Watching the video felt yucky so I tried to look deeper into this (to make it feel less yucky) and think about, like, maybe it’s a response to the fact that A&F won’t donate their clothes to homeless shelter/those in need. That sucks and is shitty, and I’m sure we all wish they would do that, but they won’t, apparently. But I don’t think that’s what this is. I think these guys (I’m not writing their names because I forgot them and I don’t care) are trying to say, “ha ha, suck it, Captain Abercrombie, because the lame-o people are wearing your ‘cool kid’ clothes now!!!”
I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt. I really did. But their intentions are clear by the end of the video. These guys claim that they have two purposes: to clothe the homeless (yay!) and transform the brand (not great). The video ends with the text and suggestion that we make A&F “The World’s Number One Brand of Homeless Apparel”. Oh. So this definitely isn’t about clothing the homeless. What is it about?
Exploiting homeless people and making them the butt of a joke.
And in doing so, they’re strengthening the dichotomy between privileged/unprivileged, or Captain Abercrombie’s “cool”/uncool. This does nothing to a) end size-based conflict with regards to clothing, which is how this all started or b) stick it to the man by making his brand undesirable. It just fuels the stigma surrounding homelessness.
If you want to piss of Captain Abercrombie, turn his clothes into toilet paper. Burn it in the streets, make it into a ballgown for your dog, let your grandfather blow his big ol’ nose into it. Use it to wipe up a baby’s creepy white puke or just don’t fucking buy it, I don’t care.
Or: take the clothes (or any clothes!) and donate them. Donate them because people need them and for no other reason.
If your goal is to make the brand look bad, do it in a way that doesn’t disenfranchise homeless people, please.
