Abercrombie & Glitch

I read Jenny Strasburg's article titled "Abercrombie & Glitch: Asian American Rip Retailer for Stereotype on T-Shirt," and it was an interesting since I remembered the incident when it happened. Growing up in Los Angeles, it was a huge deal in the Asian American communities. I remembered the kids at my school being very angry and there were petitions passed around the schools to be sent to Abercrombie & Fitch. I remembered this book I saw before named, Why I Hate Abercrombie & Fitch: Essays on Race and Sexuality. It is interesting to see the collection of essays on how one clothing company can change perception on different ethnicity and defines their sexuality. I saw how the company also follows the trend of our contemporary obsession with the body and fitness. Having shopped at Abercrombie & Fitch for a decade, I have been collecting the shopping bags of Abercrombie & Fitch, and I saw this evolution of the pictures that has been printed on the bags. The pictures on the bags from 10 years ago had a fully clothed models. Then the pictures slowly moved towards half naked models, and finally the pictures now completely cuts out the face of the models and just shows the naked midriff of the male/female models. I can see this effecting and influencing the sexuality imagery in the media, especially for such a popular brand to carry this message in our currently overly sexually exposure media.

Currently the Compact Challenge is incredibly hard for me, I am resorting to convincing my friend to buy something that I want, so I can borrow it. I really don't know where to go to buy used things or thrift shops. Maybe it's time that I started to do some research on that.

Cindy Shuai
Post #2

Strasburg, Jenny. "Abercrombie & Glitch: Asian American Rip Retailer for Stereotypes on T-Shirts"

McBride, Dwight A. Why I Hate Abercrombie & Fitch: Essays on Race and Sexuality. 2005