My lady friends and I went to the mall for a girls' afternoon. We window shopped, had facials at the Origins boutique (I'm totally in love with their Never A Dull Moment scrub), and generally pointed and squealed at the pretty shinies.

We passed the Abercrombie store and noticed new, huge black-and-white pictures in the window displays. In one picture a pretty blonde girl grinned sunshinily over her shoulder, hair falling gracefully down her bare back.

Which led me to notice that she was all bare. Really. Naked. There were gigantic, artistic pictures of naked people in the windows of a clothing store.

Now, I'm not one of those people who think Abercrombie's marketing department will be sent to hell without an electric fan for using nude models in their catalogs. I just find it silly to advertise clothing using naked people. There's probably some grand artistic concept behind Abercrombie's marketing strategy that I'm missing; I don't look for deeper messages in ads, usually because there aren't any apart from "buy this." It's a typical ploy, selling catalogs to pre-teens who aren't old enough to buy their own porn by putting in "artistic" nudes and ducking behind the First Amendment.

Conservative political shows often have a discussion after the new quarterly catalog comes out, with ominous titles like "Abercrombie: Selling porn to your kids?" They try to make it an issue of the First Amendment v. protecting our kids from pornography, but it's really about a clothing company that apparently can't sell shirts on the basis of their fashion or quality.

Parents, gently remove the catalog from your kids' grasps and explain the concept of "irony." Then, teach the kids some fiscal responsibility; no twelve-year-old should spend more money on a shirt than I do (and I have a job).

17-Jul-2003