(Reuters) – Retailer Abercrombie & Fitch said on Friday it would stop selling some of its T-shirts after a national boycott by teenage girls, who objected to slogans emblazoned across the shirts such as “Who needs brains when you have these?”[…]
Earlier this week, the Women & Girls Foundation of Southwest Pennsylvania launched a “girl-cott” of the store in protest over the T-shirts, launching an e-mail campaign and appearing on NBC’s “Today” show to air their concerns.
Well, that’s certainly cool. Although the corporate drones folded so easily, I wonder if perhaps the initial sales on the retro-sexist tees were dissappointing.
In any case, check out The Countess’s contest for best offensive (or counter-offensive) t-shirt slogan. You could win some fine chocolate shaped like a body part – what could be better?
The whole thing may have been a setup, or at least they chose to let it play out as one when the controversy began. A&F has a history of provocative ads, and each one generates tons of news coverage and millions of Web site visits. Then they pull the offensive material, and their detractors claim victory and figure it’s OK to by A&F clothes now – which they are primed to do after having seen them on the Web sites.
They’ve done it several times now (remember the “Wong Brothers Laundry” Chinese stereotype T-shirts?). Either it’s deliberate, or they’re at least just taking a flyer on the offensive material, selling it if it sells and writing it off as a loss leader if all it does is generate press coverage. They win either way – and have no incentive to stop doing these things.
Thanks for the link, Amp. I’m getting lots of great slogans. It’s going to be hard to pick a winner. What’s even more cool is that I’m going to buy some new X-rated chocolate molds in a couple of weeks. I found some great ones with people in … er … compromising positions. :-)
Free Republic, the conservative web site, has picked this up. The posters are so far uniformly positive, due to the facts that a) they also think these slogans are offensive, and b) the young ladies are using market forces and their First Amendment rights to get A&F to reconsider, as opposed to going to the courts.
Girl-cott? This is the sort of etymological blindness that leads to headaches and a strobing pain in the temples – the eponymous man originally so shunned was Captain Charles Boycott. It’s herstory repeating itself…