CHAPTER 5 : OTHER VOICES
The previous chapters have discussed texts, positions, or 'voices' of Abercrombie & Fitch through their marketing materials, and XY magazine through several of their publications. In this chapter I will present five examples of other voices that have engaged in the debate over the 'controversial' Abercombie catalog. They are:
1. The Consumer
2. The 'Decent' Minority
3. The Government
4. The Corporation
5. The Employee
6. The XY Reader
The six sections each represent voices and arguments which are different from the A&F marketing language or the XY editorials that have been discussed in the previous text analysis chapters. I will first present each text and lay out the global argument and how it is positioned in relation to the general debate around A&F's eroticized marketing campaign, using evaluative analyses to point out the different stances that authors take in this debate and in relation to their own position. Then, at the end of the chapter, I will discuss all the voices represented here in a heteroglossic analysis. By doing this I intend to generate a more complex and complete picture of the various social groups involved in the discussion, while showing the various interpretations and meanings that are created from the A&F "lifestyle branding" which is under discussion here. For this purpose the evaluative analysis will focus on a larger scale than the single word, and therefore this will not be as much of a close-reading as we have seen in previous chapters. To set off the different arguments against each other I will evaluate the texts on a more global and intertextual level. Only the most relevant text sections have been marked to point out the key features of the text.
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TEXT 1: THE CONSUMER
The original website can be found at:
http://homepage.mac.com/jmar/brandmania/af.html
The excerpt below comes from Jay Gambol's personal homepage, which I came across while using a search engine to find sites that deal with A&F and the controversy surrounding them. Many boys and girls have online screen names which have the word 'Abercrombie' in it (e.g. 'abercombieboy', 'afboi') and subscribe to online groups which organize themselves around the adoration or dislike of the A&F brand and image. Rarely though do they explain explicitly why they think A&F is 'cool' or 'hot'. The excerpts below are taken from a brief web essay written by the author/editor of the website, and does explain clearly why he thinks the A&F brand is desirable.
I like boys who wear Abercrombie & Fitch.
Sex appeal. It's all about sex appeal. Abercrombie & Fitch began in 1892 as an outfitter for exotic expeditions. They specialized in rugged, hard-wearing, durable clothing and equipment. All that's left of that company is being "hard." A&F, as it's abbreviated, has become one of the prime examples of modern brand identity creation, up to and including fostering a subculture of pretty, adventurous boys and girls.
Of all the brands I enjoy, A&F must be the guilty pleasure. Clothes are the least substantively differentiated of all the consumer goods in the world today. The crazy world of haute couture aside, what really is the difference between a 3-for-$10 Hanes crew shirt and a 1-for-$18.99 Abercrombie & Fitch shirt? A $15 Old Navy pair of cargo shorts and a $50 A&F pair? They're both made of durable cotton in overseas factories paying workers a lot less than American workers would get.
I can't deny the attractiveness of the brand identity, however; particularly the naked sexuality of their advertising. More than one person's observed that people wear Abercrombie & Fitch because they want to look like Abercrombie & Fitch models. I'd agree with that, but would go further: People wear A&F because they want to have sex with A&F models. Illogical? Yes. Irresistable? You better believe it.
Besides, I look good in A&F clothes. And the almost impossible beauty of the A&F boys (and girls) inspire me to work out and be healthy and live adventurously, which in themselves have to be good things, even if they're part of a sales pitch.
In other words, I want to be an Abercrombie & Fitch model, so people will want to have sex with me. Illogical? Maybe. Irresistable? Yup.
The author of this text explicitly recognizes that Abercombie are using sex, or sex appeal as he calls it, to market their merchandise and lifestyle. In fact, he states that the sex appeal and "naked sexuality" of A&F's advertising is what is most important to him, and is what differentiates Abercombie from other brands. The fact that sex sells, something that everybody knows but is usually not explicitly said by marketeers nor consumers, is here not only clearly identified, but glorified as a desirable thing. Even though wearing A&F is still a "guilty pleasure", which is actually good thing here, the author goes beyond the ordinary understanding that everyone wants to look like an Abercrombie model, to say he wants to have sex with an Abercombie model. He then goes on to explain that he does not just want to look like a model or want have sex with a model, but that the clothes actually look good on him, which seems to be less important than the first two reasons. We can assume the male author is speaking of having sex with the male models, although there is no definitive indication of this. He talks about the "impossible beauty of the A&F boys (and girls)", where the brackets seem to indicate that the boys are of more interest to him.
What is especially interesting in relation to A&F's lifestyle branding, in which clothing is simply one element of a much more complex brand and lifestyle imagery, is that the author claims to be "inspired" to work out, be healthy and live adventurously. Abercombie marketeers will be happy to hear that, as it shows their campaign is not just stimulating sales by promoting old-fashioned features such as price and quality, but that there overall lifestyle story is catching on and being aspired to.
The final proof of this is that the author comes around at the end to say that he wants to be an A&F model, so that people will want to have sex with him. In some way we have followed the author in his mental processing of the A&F brand throughout the text, starting with liking the ads, to looking like the models, to having sex with the models, to dressing up like them and living their healthy and adventurous lifestyle, to being one of them so that others can look at him in the same way he looked at the models at the starting point of the text. This inner process of internalization from admiration of the lifestyle and the models, to becoming one and having others admire you, is also described in the "Abercombie Boy" (chapter 3). In a way this is the completion of lifestyle brand's sell to the consumer: when you want to be one of us and not just like or admire us then you bought the concept and we've got you. Most brands clearly do not succeed to create such strong ties with their customers, and the fact that A&F do succeed certainly contributes to succesful sales figures.
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TEXT 2: THE 'DECENT' MINORITY
The excerpts below come from the website of the American Decency Association (ADA), which is a very conservative, religious group of people who protest against what they call 'indecency' in the media. Below are a few brief excerpts from texts on their website which discuss why they feel A&F's advertising campaign is indecent, inappropriate for young people, and morally wrong.
ADA website: http://www.americandecency.org/
ADA website Abercrombie section: http://www.americandecency.org/abercrombie.htm
Before the authors proceed with their analysis of A&F Quarterly catalogs and their general argumentation against Abercombie, there is this message:
DISCLAIMER:
PROCEED WITH CAUTION -- NOT ONLY ARE PORNOGRAPHIC IMAGES
ADDICTIVE AND CAPABLE OF SETTING PEOPLE OFF BUT SO ARE
WRITTEN DESCRIPTIONS.
This 'disclaimer' tells the reader that what they are about to read may be considered by them (and certainly by ADA) to be outside the 'decent' domain. Therefore 'disclaimer' is marked for normativity. 'Pornographic' and 'addictive' are defintely undesirable, and so is 'setting people off', although it is not clear what that means. Setting off sexually? Setting them off on a fight against A&F? 'Written despriptions' is marked for desirability here, as acccording to the ADA they can be undesirable when they contain sexual messages or discuss sexuality of the body in general.
The website provides 'analysis' of a number of catalogs by listing all the visual and textual material which the ADA objects too. In other words, anything sexual or erotic in their eyes. Some examples:
Page52-53: Lesbianism. One male and two females lie on the ground on top of each other in a seemingly ménage`a trois (group sex). The two females are kissing each other.
Page 69: Implying beastiality? A nude female with a donkey. The nude female is standing in front of the donkey with the donkey’s nose near her private area.
Page 52-53: Several nude males crowded together in a shower room - rear
nudity.
Page 54-55: Photo of same nude males showing rear nudity and covering
groin with towels.
Page 66: Nude male - rear nudity.
Desirablity and normativity go hand in hand here, as all these text elements are undesirable because of normative conflicts, according to the ADA. Negative normativity results in negative desirablity and positive normative in possibly positive desirablity (you may take your underwear off in the shower in private) except in the cases of group sex, beastiality and lesbianism for which always score negatively on normativity.
What is remarkable here is that throughout the ADA analyses there is mentioning of 'lesbianism' and 'beastiality', but never of (male) homosexuality or homo-eroticism. The catalogs, as I have shown in this paper (and see the appendix with example photographs from the catalogs) is full of attractive, naked young men posing and playing around with other naked or barely dressed young men. Within the normative framework of the conservative, religious, white middle class voices represented by the American Decency Association those facts and activities do not rate as homosexual, homo-erotic or gay. Males are not considered to be sexual objects and to be sexually desirable in the same way that women are, in their eyes. Horsing around in the showers, on the lawn, in the lockerroom or around the fraternity house is expected, normative, healthy behavior for young males which is not evaluated as homosexual. Even though many guys in the catalog wear no or fewer clothes than one would expect if these were real life situations, it still does not trigger anyone's suspicions or criticism. Of course ADA supporters have noticed the abundance of 'rear-nudity' but even if they have connected this observation to homo-erotic concepts, they would not explicitly list those realizations.
The following text, on the same website, lists the concerns the author has regarding A&F catalogs:
WHY A&F'S CATALOG DRAWS OUR GRAVE CONCERN
(1) Because A&F relentlessly shows no regard for the innocence of our children.
(2) Because A&F says to tens of thousands of parents nationwide who have expressed their indignation to them, THEY COULD CARE LESS.
(1) Because pornography is toxic. It is highly addictive, desensitizing and destructive.
(2) Without a question, A&F's catalog is pornographic.
(3) Though the vast majority of American corporations avoid using pornography to target our youth for sales and the lining of their pockets, A&F shamelessly and aggressively uses eroticism to bring youth to its doors and to their cash registers.
(4) Sex sells. Everybody knows it. It's far more difficult to impress onto our youth discernment, self-control, Biblical morality than it is to stir, eroticize and sell them product and turn them into porn addicts.
(5) Seeing is believing. I can present to you words to help you know the erotic nature of the catalog but my words are kept toned down. The catalog is far worse than my guarded descriptions.
(6) Sex is a wonderful gift of God - in the context of marriage.
As Pam Stenzel states in her video tape, sex outside of marriage is destructive. As a person follows the vision of sexuality painted by A&F, that young person is blindly being led down a path that may seem innocent enough but ....
(7) Pornography addicts.
(8) I have four children. Through their growing up years, I have desired and prayed that each of my children would save themselves for marriage. I'm not finished with parenting and all of my children haven't finished growing up. Any corporate entity, TV program, magazine, video game, movie, catalog that attempts to undermine the sexual purity of any of my children or God's clarion call to be holy as He is holy, is a messenger of
the evil one - and I will not be lulled to sleep or oblivious to the
reality that this agent is an agent of Satan himself and he/she/they must be exposed and their evil opposed as best as I can.
There are many more similar texts on the website, and all of them are filled with desirability markers of what is either evil and corrupting, or holy and moral. In this text we do not find an outline of a process of internalization, as in the first text, or even explanations of how the sexual content 'corrupts' young people, or what pornography is. It seems that sex is good within the context of marriage, but bad in the context of attracting young customers to your product. Selling product is probably a relatively good thing by itself (considering this is a capitalist society), but a bad thing when sex is used to do so. Obviously, what is considered desirable and undesirable here is closely related to this group's interpretation of religion and bible text.
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TEXT 3: THE GOVERNMENT
Corinne Wood is the Republican Lieutenant Governor of the State of Illinois, and she's in the race for the office of the governor. For 3 years now she has campaigned against A&F's marketing activities, and the websites listed provide her point of view. She speaks as the Lieutenant Governor and all statements are located on official State of Illinois websites and servers.
Corinne Wood's anti-A&F web page: http://www.state.il.us/ltgov/stopaandf.htm
Official statement at: http://www.state.il.us/ltgov/StopAandF-MediaAdv.htm
Official letter to the CEO of A&F: http://www.state.il.us/ltgov/StopAandF-Letter.htm
Dear Mr. Jeffries:
I am writing to you yet again to express my disgust with Abercrombie & Fitch. As I first informed you in 1999, the marketing strategy your company shamelessly employs continues to offend me personally, and the constituents I am entrusted to represent as Lt. Governor of the State of Illinois.
Abercrombie & Fitch's latest catalog clearly ignores repeated pleas to scale back your irresponsible promotion of gratuitous sexual behavior and promiscuity through the use of pictures of young models in compromising and sexually suggestive positions. Often these pictures do not include any of the clothing your company so eagerly seeks to sell.
My desire to see this marketing strategy stopped now is two-fold. I have been elected to develop sound policy initiatives to address the concerns of the people of Illinois. The barrage of sexual images that flood our televisions, computers and mailboxes is of great concern to many.
I am also the mother of three teen and pre-teen children. It is my hope as a parent that my children would be able to peruse a clothing catalog without being inundated with graphic images promoting promiscuous – and potentially dangerous – lifestyles, tips on how to drink irresponsibly and interviews with porn stars. Your market is not young adults 18-22 years old, as your publicist claims. You have customers as young as 10 years old. Visit any middle school, and you will see children sporting Abercrombie & Fitch clothing.
In December, 1999, you ignored my letter voicing my disappointment and disgust with Abercrombie & Fitch's marketing practices. I received no response to my call for your company to be a good corporate citizen and act responsibly, instead of exploiting our youth. Hopefully, this time you will get the message. As a parent, I refuse to have my children exploited in the name of corporate profits, and have successfully encouraged many diverse groups of concerned citizens to join my fight.
Your policy of prohibiting the sale of your catalogs to children under 18 years of age is likely an effort to assuage the concerns of parents who are equally disturbed by your sexually provocative promotional materials. This strategy is a sham. By employing such a practice, you are missing the point. Restricting the sales of written and visual material to persons at least 18 years of age is appropriate for those in the business of selling pornography; it should not be necessary for a clothing retailer such as Abercrombie & Fitch. In my opinion, prohibiting catalog sales to minors is an admission on the part of your company that there is little, if any, distinction between the two.
Sincerely,
Corinne Wood
Lieutenant Governor, State of Illinois
This text, as well as the entire 'stop A&F' campaign run by Corinne Wood, is run from a website on the official Illinois government server. This in itself may be questionable, but it does explain why all hints at religion or morality have been removed. The Lieutenant Governor does not speak of God and morality, but of responsibility, good citizenship, and safety. These are traditional themes in political language, although I had never come across the term 'good corporate citizen', and this term is unfortunately not clearly explained here. The letter from Wood came after A&F had been officially warned against selling their 'pornographic' materials to minors after a 10 year old person bought the catalog in an Abercombie store. After that, A&F decided to package the catalogs in a plastic wrapper, put a warning label on them (see homepage of this project website) and require official government issued identification cards from anyone purchasing the Quarterly. Corinne Wood now uses this corporate strategy to avoid prosecution against A&F and calls it a 'sham'. Wrapping catalogs and requiring ID is, according to her, only proof that the catalog is 'pornographic'. To be clear, photography that shows breasts or 'rear-nudity' is not displayed by A&F in their stores or in mainstream advertising. The sale of 'sexual content' by A&F to customers of 'legal age' is perfectly legal in the United States, and some citizens of Illinois have complained that Wood spends her time (and other people's tax money) to stop adults from making a catalog featuring adults, to sell it to adults, all of which is perfectlty legal.
With legal options exhausted and religious motivation unavailable to her, Wood calls on the corporation to be a 'good corporate citizen'. Selling clothes is good, making profits is good, being good capitalists is good, but making money while explicitly using sex to do so is bad. Pornography can be made and sold by those channels which have taken that place in society, where most people can be comfortable with its seemingly marginal place while it is still readily available. The status quo is not challenged as mainstream normativity related to sexuality is left untouched. However, when a (at least formerly) respected brand of conservative quality clothing changes course and becomes 'cool' and 'sexual', while linking those features to youth, all alarm bells start to ring. Corinne Wood, along with the ADA and the gay voices we have read in this chapter as well as in "We control who you think you are" (chapter 4) all agree that A&F are selling their clothing and lifestyle concept on sex. However, the 'hetero-normative' voices here are objecting to the fact that it is sex that sells the product, while the 'homo-normative' voices have no problem with the sexual content, but with the fact that A&F are not honest about which sexualities they are representing and even refuse to sell to some of its key markets (at least openly, by refusing to advertize in gay youth media and so denying that market).
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TEXT 4: THE CORPORATION
Abercrombie & Fitch annual report 1998: Chairman's Letter:
We were succesful this year because the A&F brand is more authentic and relevant than ever. The brand is our lifestyle, our focus - it ensures growth and promises stability. A great brand is a center of growth and revenue - it represents a relationship with customers. It's not a faddish chip to be cashed in on short-sighted gains.
The value of having a great brand is far reaching and cannot be overstated - it's a snowball effect. The A&F label gives us the ability to evolve, creating endless growth opportunities. It helps us attract the brightest, most talented young people from around the country. It attracts millions to our website. It allows for greater profit margins. It lessens the risk of moving on new business concepts. It promotes innovation. It ensures long-term profitability. It adds built-in value to everything we produce. It accelerates growth. It stabilizes. It gives focus and direction. It produces an emotional response in our customers.
But emotional responses and aspirational lifestyles can't be faked. Authenticity fuels A&F's branded momentum. Our home office and stores are filled with our target customers - Abercrombie & Fitch merchandisers, designers and marketing teams are filled with fresh-faced, just-out-of-school kids from select universities around the country. Market research isn't forecasts and focus groups. We go to college campuses and specialized events around the country, talking, watching and hanging out with the customers. Few companies and even fewer competing brands can stake a legitimate claim to authenticity - it takes time and performance to develop a heritage, a meaning.
Peerless quality is and will remain the Abercombie & Fitch standard. I got a reality check recently, a reminder that great brands aren't only about the intangibles of an aspirational lifestyle. (...)
Abercombie & Fitch as a corporation does not comment on the debate I have presented and analyzed in this paper. They generally do not respond to the letters, complaints, boycotts and warnings sent to them by the different groups represented in these chapters. Their advertising agency did briefly comment on XY magazine's complaint that A&F would not advertise with them. The argument was that XY's demographic was simply not right for A&F as they would not reach enough of their target group through the magazine. The official statements from A&F as a company are limited to the chairman's letter in the annual report. This report is written for current and potential shareholders and investors and presents mostly figures on sales and profits. Thew chairman's letter is supposed to reflect the situation the company is currently in, and project both (optimistic) future financial expectations as well as an impression of excitement, potential growth, and opportunity.
Most interesting in this text is A&F's representation of their brand as 'relevant' and 'authentic', which are the most important and desirable qualities of the brand. It is not explained what this exactly means, but it seems that A&F are saying they have carefully monitored what its target group is like and wants, and therefore the brand is a good reproduction or representation of the young people they have studied. In effect, young people are studied, recreated in popular culture representations and then there own image is sold back to them via the shopping mall. Naturally, this image is 'slightly' changed, enhanced or improved so that the 'lifestyle' becomes an 'aspirational lifestyle', and customers have a reason to like A&F's version of reality more than their own. The lifestyle concept consists of many different features ranging from the catalog to clothes, music to television, and incorporates issues important to young people such as friends, sex, college, fun, image and identity. These issues carry meaning for young people, and these meanings are created and recreated through A&F products, only one of which is the actual clothing. At the end of the text section immediately above, the chairman remembers, or was actually reminded by a customer, that the lifestyle brand is not only about the 'intangibles', but that there is an actual physical product in the mix somewhere.
Annual report 1999:
We opened 54 new stores and a band wrote a hit song about girls who wear A&F.
Other popular media and popular culture sources have picked up on the success of A&F and the 'brand powered momentum' as it is referred to in annual reports. The brand is intertextually woven into other parts of youth culture in an explicit way, which to A&F executives is obviously proof that there campaign is succeeding. Also the pornographic industry has notices A&F, with gay pornographic videos that have titles containing the word 'Abercombie', or actors who look like A&F models or wear their clothes. This last fact of popular culture up-take is, of course, not mentioned in the annual report, but will not have gone unnoticed by A&F's advertising executives.
...to our customers that brand continues to be relevant and aspirational.
...,but brands cannot expect long term succes from marketing alone.
1997:
Abercombie's brand powered momentum is fueled by coordinated lifestyle reinforcement. (...) Our customers visit not only to find the highest quality clothing, but to have the A&F experience - they come to be part of the lifestyle. The brand is at once relevant and aspirational.
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TEXT 5: THE EMPLOYEE
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TEXT 6: THE XY READER
Letters to the editor in XY 26 (2002):
CRITICS SHOULD SHUT UP
I'm sick and tired of people saying XY is trashy or too graphic. XY has the same images we see everywhere else. The difference is who the readers are. When a gay boy buys GQ, the world can pretend he's not going home to lust after all the overtly homo-erotic CK ads. With other gay mags, the world can pretend all readers are middle age, middle class, and spend all their life in domestic bliss. The world can pretend gay boys don't have desire, don't have needs - that we don't exist. But when a gay boy buys XY, the world can't pretend we don't exist. It has to deal with the fact that gay boys are real, that we have the same sexual urges and desires as everyone else. That is why they can't handle us reading XY. But here's what I tell the world. Get over it! (Boyblue@isd.net, Minnesota).
AN UNHAPPY ABERCOMBIE BOY
I don't know what to do about Abercombie. I feel crappy I even have an 'Aberboy' screenname, considering how they are against what XY stands for. I am a 20yo college student. I like the clothes. Abercombie clothes are me. But A+F are really bad for not openly supporting the lifestyle of our young gay generation. Do I renew my subscription to A+F Quarterly that just arrived? It was us who made them big. Nor they're just using us, profiting off us. (aberboy112@aol.com, Greensboro NC).
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