Reason #3563 why Abercrombie and Fitch sucks:
As if the sweatshop labor, commercialized conformity and the fact that their clothes are worn by preppy conservative twits wasn't enough to make me hate A&F with a passion, they've recently added another offensive t-shirt to the racks. This time, they're not picking on Asian Americans, but poor rural white people from West Virginia. The offending t-shirt reads: "It's all relative in West Virginia," thus building on the stereotype that incest is rampant in those parts. Ah, there's nothing like rich corporate heads getting their jollies at the expense of poor rural people to make me feel glad to be a homo sapien.
Hey! Abercrombie! (and Fitch, if you're listening), I've got some more ideas for clever t-shirts that you can sell for damn near $30! How 'bout describing how black people love watermelon? Or that jews control the world? Maybe you can think of a witty way of showing how women love to wash the dishes?
Anyways, this affair reminded me of an essay that I love. It's by Wendell Berry (who's as wise as three Gandalfs) and it's called "The Prejudice Against Country People." The essay doesn't deal specifically with the issue raised above (rural people as incestuous hicks), but delves deeper into the matter, arguing that the oppression of rural people is a result of the perceived "backwards" economic system that is the foundation of rural life (ie. the family farm, local economy, etc.). Rural economics don't utilize corporate buzzwords like "downsize" "progress," "merger," etc., and as a result those who use such economics are seen as being socially retarded and not worth preserving after the corporate behemoths move into town. It doesn't take a huge logical leap to see how such economic exploitation can lead to the rise of vicious stereotypes like the one promoted by A&F. Afterall, one doesn't have to feel guilty about participating in the exploitation of rural people if they're just inbred racist hicks. Cognitive dissonance, right? Here's a brief excerpt:
"I believe it is a fact, proven by their rapidly diminishing numbers and economic power, that the world's small farmers and other "provincial" people have about the same status now as enemy civilians in wartime. They are the objects of small, "humane" consideration, but if they are damaged or destroyed "collaterally," then "we very much regret it," but they were in the way--and, by implication, not quite as human as "we" are. The industrial and corporate powers, abetted and excused by their many dependents in government and the universities, are perpetrating a sort of economic genocide--less bloody than military genocide, to be sure, but just as arrogant, foolish, and ruthless, and perhaps more effective in ridding the world of a kind of human life. The small farmers and the people of small towns are understood as occupying the bottom step of the economic stairway and deservedly falling from it because they are rural, which is to say not metropolitan or cosmopolitan, which is to say socially, intellectually, and culturally inferior to 'us.'"
As if the sweatshop labor, commercialized conformity and the fact that their clothes are worn by preppy conservative twits wasn't enough to make me hate A&F with a passion, they've recently added another offensive t-shirt to the racks. This time, they're not picking on Asian Americans, but poor rural white people from West Virginia. The offending t-shirt reads: "It's all relative in West Virginia," thus building on the stereotype that incest is rampant in those parts. Ah, there's nothing like rich corporate heads getting their jollies at the expense of poor rural people to make me feel glad to be a homo sapien.
Hey! Abercrombie! (and Fitch, if you're listening), I've got some more ideas for clever t-shirts that you can sell for damn near $30! How 'bout describing how black people love watermelon? Or that jews control the world? Maybe you can think of a witty way of showing how women love to wash the dishes?
Anyways, this affair reminded me of an essay that I love. It's by Wendell Berry (who's as wise as three Gandalfs) and it's called "The Prejudice Against Country People." The essay doesn't deal specifically with the issue raised above (rural people as incestuous hicks), but delves deeper into the matter, arguing that the oppression of rural people is a result of the perceived "backwards" economic system that is the foundation of rural life (ie. the family farm, local economy, etc.). Rural economics don't utilize corporate buzzwords like "downsize" "progress," "merger," etc., and as a result those who use such economics are seen as being socially retarded and not worth preserving after the corporate behemoths move into town. It doesn't take a huge logical leap to see how such economic exploitation can lead to the rise of vicious stereotypes like the one promoted by A&F. Afterall, one doesn't have to feel guilty about participating in the exploitation of rural people if they're just inbred racist hicks. Cognitive dissonance, right? Here's a brief excerpt:
"I believe it is a fact, proven by their rapidly diminishing numbers and economic power, that the world's small farmers and other "provincial" people have about the same status now as enemy civilians in wartime. They are the objects of small, "humane" consideration, but if they are damaged or destroyed "collaterally," then "we very much regret it," but they were in the way--and, by implication, not quite as human as "we" are. The industrial and corporate powers, abetted and excused by their many dependents in government and the universities, are perpetrating a sort of economic genocide--less bloody than military genocide, to be sure, but just as arrogant, foolish, and ruthless, and perhaps more effective in ridding the world of a kind of human life. The small farmers and the people of small towns are understood as occupying the bottom step of the economic stairway and deservedly falling from it because they are rural, which is to say not metropolitan or cosmopolitan, which is to say socially, intellectually, and culturally inferior to 'us.'"