Abercrombie and Fitch and the Moral Degradation of...

Abercrombie and Fitch and the Moral Degradation of America This past month I made my last visit to the popular teenage/college student retail store Abercrombie and Fitch. Finishing up some back to school shopping, I was on a quest for jeans, and I knew the place to get them. My last two favorite pairs were from Abercrombie and Fitch, and I was planning on buying the same kind once again. Happy and relieved that I would not spend the afternoon ransacking the mall for one pair of jeans, I entered the store to the pulsating beat of techno dance music. In front of me was the teenage Mecca of what is truly hip -- the first thing I noticed were the life-size pictured that covered the walls -- half-clad muscular and glistening young†¦show more content†¦Overwhelmed by the stimuli, I set out to find the jeans I wanted as quickly as possible. Searching through pile and rack, I found Wide leg tomboy, Tomboy flare, and Bootcut tomboy, but none of the plain Tomboy I has previously owned. Disappointed and a little disgusted, I left th e store empty handed. It was not so much that I had failed to find my jeans that upset me, but rather the realization that this store had somehow reached a point where it was controlling the minds of my fellow young shoppers. The store I had just left seemed to be advertising more than Tomboy flares and wool V-neck sweaters -- the music, the pictures on the wall, the salespeople -- they all set the level of what is cool just a little bit higher, while the customers mindlessly followed. Then next week I was reading the Star Tribune newspaper when I came across and editorial written about Abercrombie and Fitch. The author was disgusted with the store because of its blatant promotion of college-age drinking. The issue came up in one of AFs quarterly magazines. Instead of sending out free catalogs of their merchandise to customers, AF sells a retail magazine which they distribute four times a year for the small fee of five dollars per issue. The magazine is filled with pictures similar to the life-size ones which cover the store walls -- tan, beautiful and