A Look at Mike Jeffries and His Abercrombie & Fitch

Much has been said recently about the inflammatory comments made by Mike Jeffries, the CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch, regarding who his target customers are. Although the comments stem from a 2006 Salon article, they still resonate today and reflect a much larger issue than one man's skewed view of the world.

Mr. Jeffries states throughout the article that his target customers are young, attractive men between the ages of 18 and 22 years of age. They are the lean, athletic model type with a washboard stomach and a cool casualty the soon-to-be 69 year old doesn't seem to have. They are popular and cool and never ugly or fat. They are clean, masculine and young - guys who are effortlessly part of an In Crowd that doesn't seem to be accepting any new members.

But let's take a deeper look. Mike Jeffries single-handedly resuscitated a bankrupt brand into a billion-dollar company, so clearly the man knows a thing or two about what he's doing. Perhaps he's been successful because he's targeting the young man he always wanted to be or possibly even who he once was. Perhaps Mike Jeffries just really understands the male youth point of view.

Men are visual creatures - science has proven such - and selling a lifestyle to young adult and early adult males that says, "Hey, if you wear this, you're the guy everyone else wants to be" not only makes sense, but it's smart. It's the fantasy that clothes are all you need to change your social status, the idea that "dressing the part" will gain you acceptance as one of the elite, golden throng. This isn't a fantasy Mr. Jeffries has created - it is a common theme stretching far beyond his years. Mr. Jeffries is simply perpetuating the myth of Jay Gatsby, Cinderella, Martin Chuzzlewit, Katniss, Jean Valjean, the Count of Monte Cristo, and every other outcast in history or literature who just needed a makeover to become part of the In Crowd. There are even a number of popular films that promote this idea, including the 1987 Patrick Dempsey film, "Can't Buy Me Love", the 2003 remake with Nick Cannon and Christina Milian, and the 1999 "Drive Me Crazy" with Melissa Joan Hart and Adrian Grenier.

Yes, Mr. Jeffries knows a thing or two about his target customer, but the mentality Mr. Jeffries is targeting is that of boyhood, not manhood. Maybe Mr. Jeffries has never really grown up, a distorted version of Peter Pan if you will. But, the thing is, grown men know the difference between someone who looks the part and someone who isn't just playing a role. Maybe that's why Mr. Jeffries chooses to target men whose brain function responsible for "good judgment" hasn't fully developed - he targets the 18-22 year old crowd and the prefrontal cortex doesn't fully mature until age 25. Regardless, he is a salesman and he is meticulous about what the lifestyle he sells and how he sells it. He is offensive, sure, but he's also tapped into what the age of boys wants.

I do think that Mr. Jeffries has missed the mark on a number of his ideas about the popular and the cool, but the one point I take great issue with is his definition of beautiful people, in particular beautiful women. Abercrombie & Fitch doesn't offer women's clothing in any size bigger than a "large" or size 10. By his own comments, any women's clothing sized larger than a 10 is a size fat people wear; and Abercrombie & Fitch is not going to offer fat girl sizes because fat girls (and fat people) are neither cool or popular. If this is true, then I wonder what Mr. Jeffries thinks about Marilyn Monroe, Christina Hendricks and Kate Winslet? These women wear or have worn sizes larger than a size 10, yet they are considered among the most beautiful women in the world. Even Kate Upton - the two-time Sports Illustrated covergirl - might have trouble squeezing her well-endowed chest into an Abercrombie & Fitch tee shirt, so does that make her fat or ugly or unpopular?

One of the popular A&F tee shirts reads, "Gentlemen Prefer Tig Ol' Bitties" - a play on words about men and their age-old obsession with women's breasts - so why then doesn't Abercrombie & Fitch make clothes for women who have big breasts instead of clothes that mostly fit pubescent girls? And what about pregnant women? Are they fat, too? There are some reports that Mr. Jeffries has a grown son somewhere out there in the world, and I wonder if he thought his wife was fat and ugly when she was pregnant? These are the questions I'd ask Mr. Jeffries.

I don't care that Mike Jeffries is eccentric or wildly opinionated about his target customer. I care about the world his target customer lives in, where only the young and beautiful get ahead. I care about the "dress the part" myth Mike Jeffries perpetuates and the idea that a woman is fat if she's bigger than a size 10. I care about the people who think supporting a company that promotes these kinds of things is okay, that fat-shaming is not only acceptable but also encouraged. I care that an almost-69-year-old man-boy who has bleached, tanned and surgically enhanced himself into something almost unrecognizable seems to know more about our 18-22 year old young men and what they want than our educators, parents and political leaders do.

Let's not focus on Mr. Jeffries anymore and his offensive remarks about fat people and the popular crowd. Let's instead use this as an opportunity to examine how we see fat people and how we got to this point as a society. Let's make "healthy" the it-look instead of the "twiggy" of the 70s, the "heroin chic" of the 90s or the anorexic stick-figures of the 2000s. Let's redefine what it means to be beautiful and embrace all the colors, sizes and shapes of humanity instead of making beauty exclusive to one face or size. We are responsible for the standards we set, so let us choose a new standard to live by - one where fat and ugly are not synonymous, popular doesn't mean better and beauty is more than skin deep.