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1926 Abercrombie and Fitch (Photo credit: Blue Funnies)

2013 may go down as the summer of stupid. First, Abercrombie & Fitch backs its corporate ass into the fire with their “only the cool kids can wear our unimaginative clothing line – so no fatties!” assertion. Then Victoria’s Secret gets its own body diversity protest – probably because the sales staff at Mall of America consists of assholes with mouths – and then, because in the minds of Vice magazine editors the only good female author is a dead one, it is somehow deemed appropriate to do a “what they were wearing when they killed themselves” fashion spread focusing on well known deceased women authors. They pulled it offline but it’s in print. So people are paying attention and speaking up.

But the unaware still outnumber the aware. Yesterday, when I commented on some vintage misogyny the response I got back was “I just don’t see it.” While the author of such a comment may be speaking tongue in cheek, I doubt it. It’s almost like some people working in fashion have brainwashing blindness.

When the #fitchplease brouhaha started the idea of me just walking into a local Abercrombie & Fitch and just standing there. Since LFO ruined any interest I would ever have in A&F, I passed. Good gods, I’m not wearing that! I might attract a boy band!

While the protests themselves sound like fun I find the concept of them flawed. I’m glad they are raising awareness – but awareness, like all raised energy, needs direction.

The targets of the protesters are two well known retail store chains. These stores are, one way or the other, private entities. The US government even considers them people. (Corporate Personhood, the taproot of evil.) They are well within their rights to be negative forces. The corporation isn’t going to change. They are not by the people for the people – they are by their corporate board, for lots and lots of money.

Unless of course, the protest isn’t aimed at the corporation but aimed at the people that would shop there.

I don’t get the impression that that’s what the protesters are thinking. Because if they were, there are some additional steps to take based on the problems a successful protest could create.

First, they need to find something else for the retail employees to do. If sales take a nosedive in connection with the protests then the protesters are succeeding at something but creating job loss. We’re having enough trouble there; since these corporations won’t smarten up enough to significantly boost their sales by adding plus size lines that means that the most likely outcome of the protests will be collateral damage. The collateral damage will absolutely be the fault of the corporation – and buy, will the corporation convincingly blame the protesters.

Second, based on corporate da-headedness, a successful protest of Victoria’s Secret disrupts a market need without providing an adequate replacement.

In the case of Abercrombie & Fitch that’s not even a concern. They are beyond replaceable – a hot guy can wear a polo shirt from a thrift store and it will look just as good as an Abercrombie & Fitch polo. Even though Victoria Secret actively excludes me, good bras are rare and while iffy science suggests they are not the physical necessity they are billed as, they are usually a social requirement.

I personally know of a few would-be plus size brassiere makers. I even have my own sewing machine gathering dust. It seems like a more effective protest would be to stand outside Victoria Secret and fit women for bras then show them how to make their own. A lot of corporate-types really think these protests are about hurt feelings and most see that as, through multiple hoops of failed logic, a means of brand-building. The way to get through to them is to make them physically see the money they’re losing.

This is because, in corporate thinking, customers are abstractions. Humanizing yourself does nothing to a literally non-human person like a company. So those underwear protests? They won’t work. But messing up their bottom line or getting people you know they don’t want in their clothes into them (ack! MY BRAND!) will.

As for Vice magazine… it’s in print, they’re not sorry. All you can do now is buy a copy of the magazine, tear out the masthead and make sure never to have sex with any with their name on it.

Related articles

• Activists Protest Abercrombie & Fitch CEO’s Plus-Size Exclusion In Flagship Store [PHOTOS]
• Abercrombie & Fitch: Fat, ugly people shouldn’t buy our clothes
• Almost-Naked, Fully-Awesome Women Protest Victoria’s Secret’s Discriminatory Body Standards
• VICE’s Suicide-Themed Fashion Feature: Art, Offensive, Or Both?
• Sickening New Revelations About Abercrombie & Fitch’s Corporate Dress Code Add Fuel to Fire
• Victoria’s Secret Vs Protesters: ‘We Want to Represent the Public and Fight for More Accurate Representations of Bodies’
• Love the Skin You’re In? by Leia Shaw
• People Don Their Skivvies to Push for Body Diversity at Victoria’s Secret
• Plus Size News Roundup 6/12/13

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• Gotta Have It: FELICITY & COCO Junior Plus Size Strapless Maxi Dress

*gasp* a hot 41 year old! Being visible!

• Apparently there’s work for plus size models in the Christian Evangelical business.
• Read this great DIY piece on fixing the ever-frustrating shirt-gap.
• Over at Ellitude, another essay on the “f” word.
• “Out here in the real world, away from Internet-land, away from media-land, magazine ads and TV, “fat” doesn’t exist. Nobody is “fat” in reality because it is not an objective marker of weight. It’s not an accurate term by any means to measure one’s body by. Overweight? Underweight? Obese? BMI? Pounds? Kilograms? Sure. But even some of those are questionable.”
• The plus size model meme: insidious.
• An essay about staying sane in a world that blitzes everyone with “perfect body” ideals that are aspirational (which really just means “unhealthy.)
• “Another study concluded that media exposure can influence body dissatisfaction, aspirations for thinness, as well as disordered eating, particularly for teens and young adults.” Watching that stuff about being thin and perfect just might make you fat. There’s a good chance it’s consciously intended to trigger the destructive behaviors.
• This great profile of plus size comics like Rebel Wilson and Dawn French overlooks that Wilson is on a diet for the sake of a Weight Watchers contract.
• Ah, the question of fashion and feminism – someone has taken it on. It’s certainly a conflict I have, especially as a fem straight woman who really is dressing for herself.
• *Gasp!* A 41 year old plus size lingerie model! Sexy can keep that long?
• Laura Beck at Jezebel blog has added to the call for decent plus size clothing.
• Take some sneak peeks at House of Curves.

Plus Size Health

This is a collection of health news and related links for plus-size women. Please bear in mind that many, even most of such studies are the following

1)Funded by corporations that make a great deal of money from the diet industry. 2)Inconclusive. 3)Find correlation, yes, but not causation. A triangle may be prone to cancer, but a square also being a geometric shape does NOT mean it is also prone to cancer. 4)Exaggerated and panic-inducing. The “obesity epidemic” exists in part because people never previously considered “obese” have been re-classified under an arbitrary definition of “fat.”

For more insight and understanding into this, please read Junkfood Science from the beginning.

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• Skipping breakfast might increase risk of diabetes.
• TV commercials can make kids want junk food. Works for toy sales.
• Science does not support putting kids on diets. Again.

Business of Plus

• Listen to the Wall Street Journal podcast talking about the nuances of why plus size customers are the market to reach. “A lot of [retailers] don’t want to be linked to plus sizes.” We need to talk about this – in considerable detail. This is especially true since it’s in the mind of the boardroom members – and not even remotely in the mind of their straight size customers. Also, prepare to hear evidence that our economy is failing because boardroom members can’t do math.
• A summer trend – even the Daily Mail is covering how much market potential plus size women have.
• Debenhams has made a move to cut back on air-brushing. Are sales down? I know that the CEO that worked with N Brown (Simply Be, etc.) has moved on so it’s hard to say what has influenced the decision.
• Kenosha Wisconsin now has its own plus size consignment shop – seriously, they seem to pop up in every city. It’s great.
• Great interview with the founder of Full Figured Fashion Week.
• Clothing brand Igigi is getting considerable love over at the Guardian.
• Within 8 months of Modcloth including plus sizes the sector is responsible for 8% of their revenue. Great – add two more larger sizes, please? I really want to wear your stuff!

Plus Size International

• Vogue.it has to add its own list of top curvy models. This must be the trend for summer list posts.
• John Paul Gaultier brings up an interesting phenomenon: the belief that beautiful women should remain silent. Because that way no one has to think of us as, y’know, people.
• Take a look at this German examination of Jennie Runk, Ashley Graham and Robyn Lawley, billed as the “most successful plus size models in the world.”

Related articles

• Full Figured Fashion Week Plus Size Models Announced
• Protests in Underwear Outside Victoria’s Secret Ask for Body Diversity
• Almost-Naked, Fully-Awesome Women Protest Victoria’s Secret’s Discriminatory Body Standards

If you were to visit a fashion blogger’s house, what is the first place you would look? The bathroom, for whatever weird prescriptions that person has? The living room, to see where that writer nose-picks while viewing appalling television? … or, most probably, the closet, as soon as it’s left unattended long enough.

That’s what happened with Star (pictured.) Well, really, she came over to pull a gnarly oregano patch for me; I got a wild hair to have a night out and since she did not have a change of clothing she got to tour some wardrobe pieces.

It occurred to me as I questioned her about her tastes that my approach differs from the shame masquerading as advice directed at plus size women in one fashion column after another.

Typical approach: “So, what piece of your body do you wish to mask your shame about in this moment?”

My approach: “How would you like to feel right now?”

Typical approach: “Black is figure flattering. And this will hide all of your body and your personality.”

My approach: “So how much skin do you want to show?

Typical approach: “And this is slimming…”

My approach: “Anyone in particular you’d really enjoy offending?”

We had a good time – although I think there will be weeping when Star gives me my brown miniskirt back.

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• How fashion blogs became a real business and always will be one! By T.S.
• Take my picture – short film

• Fans of Revenge – or Revenge style – costume designer Jill Ohanneson has plans in the works for a clothing line based on the show. She hopes also to offer plus sizes and menswear.
• Gemma Collins has another plus size capsule line out with Simply Be.
• Plus-size blogger Bella Styles has a fabulous writeup in Richmond Magazine.
• Get the right bra size for $19.95?
• Plus-size and car shopping? Skip the Ford Focus.
• So the Abercrombie & Fitch flagship store got picketed. More fun with #fitchplease.
• Australian advertisers aren’t doing much to win that body positivity award.
• Huff Post has its list of plus size models. Must be that season again
• Amy Sellu has a plus-size modeling contract – and insight as to what it’s like to freelance as a plus model.
• Good news for ASOS Curve fans: they’re expanding their plus size line in terms of size – from 20-26 to 18-28.
• Ascena Retails profit has slid 37%  – we’ll see if this is a bump from requiring Lane Bryant.
• Read about the innovation behind “Booty Pop.”
• Very Cherry Retro believes a customer should pay the same for a piece of clothing – no matter what size it is.
• Vietnamese publication Xa Luan has a list of their favorite plus size celebrities.
• Keep an eye out for German plus size line Womanice by Anja Gockel.</li>