I read yesterday that Ambercrombie & Fitch have decided it would be a good idea to market padded swim suits to seven year olds. Really, was this a good idea? With all the marketing people in that company, did not one of them speak up and even hint that this might be a bad idea?
I am no stranger to bad business decisions. I, like most people have worked around them all my life. You look at what someone is doing in the business and no matter how hard you try, you find it difficult to comprehend the decisions that are made around you. You try to offer input, give advice, and engender understanding, but in the end there’s nothing you can do but watch the bus go over the cliff.
That’s what I am sure has happened here. In fact, I’m more than positive I can walk you through the decision process. You see, someone in the company learned that their daughter, niece, neighbor girl, whomever wanted to be older. They learned that they asked her mother when she would be old enough to have breasts. After all…my big sister Susie has them…I should have them. So then they went to the office, and thought up this whole idea. They figured they could make a bikini…for a small child…and the child would be all over wanting it. They might be right. Perhaps young girls, looking at the scantily clad images on the walls of their stores would want to look like them. Why not? Hell…I want to look like them. But then I look terrible in a pushup bra.
Anyway, this marketing rep was thinking that, like parents listening to their child whine for Captn’ Crunch in the cereal aisle at Walmart, they would break down and buy this product for their child. You see…they KNEW the power of a child’s demands on a parent. They KNEW that parents would eventually break down and buy whatever the child wanted, no matter what the cost. They KNEW that no matter what, in the end, parents want to make their children happy. What they didn’t know, was that even more than that, parents want to make their children SAFE!
Sexualizing a seven or ten year old is insane. Hell…I think sexualizing an 18 year old is insane, and I’m not even a parent. Lord knows they should have locked me in an all-male school when I was a teenager. I was gasoline and teenaged girls were the match. I’m out of fuel now, but I can still remember what it was like. How anyone would think that making a small child look like a young woman is a good idea defies common sense. With all the dangers in the world for young children, why would anyone want to add to that danger?
So Ambercrombie, I think it would be a good idea to move the product out of your stores. It was a bad idea. Do I think you’re managed by a bunch of closet pedophiles? No. Do I think you intended harm? No. Do I think you have profit in mind over any other human consideration? DEFINITELY! But perhaps this time you should admit it was a mistake. And perhaps you should change your idea of the perfect model. I think you spent so much time creating clothes for anorexic models, that you lost sight of what real people look like. I understand the mistake. You thought a normal sized seven year old, was really 30.