media portfolio #8

This picture brings me back to the reading on McBrIn the article “Why I Hate Abercrombie and Fitch” by Dwight McBride, he states that the Ambercrombe and Fitch name is geared towards a certain group of people including their age, color, and social class. The name is influencing the way the youth and the young adults look at clothes themselves and what they represent. He says the clothes are made to target the young middle and upper class kids. McBride argues that Ambercrombie and Fitch are doing more than just selling clothes to people they are in a way showing them a way of life. He says that this is bad because young people will try to measure up to the clothes and what they stand for, and in the end they won't be accepted in society, or looked at as having money. He says on page 71 “Ambercrombie and Fitch codes for race and class without actually having to name it.” On the website, there's alot of pictures of young people that represent many different backgrounds. There are blacks, whites, asians, hispanics, etc that appear on the website. If you look at the way they advertise it's made to look like they are appealing to everybody but that really isn't true. The mass majority of the employees that work in the store are white. The employees that are not white nine times out of ten are working in the back stocking or doing some over night work. They are rarely on the front lines helping customers. The website makes an outsider think that the store is diverse and gives all races a fair chance but in person it's clear that's not true. Most stores if you really look at have an un spoken policy like Ambercrombie and Fitch does. Discrimination is something that has been a problem in alot of stores world wide.

Again I agree and disagree with McBride. I see kids going in and out of Ambercrombie and Fitch trying to capture the latest styles and looks. Even in school the kids mostly white would go out and buy up the store just to look like the models that came out in the newest magazine. They feel like if they dont look like them in some way they aren't as cool or rich. The one's who aren't wearing the clothes are viewed as uncool or "lame", which is one of the things McBride was talking about. If you ask me it's all over rated. The clothes are nice but it's not as serious as they make it to be