Open letter to Mike Jeffries, CEO at Abercrombie and Fitch

Mike Jeffries
CEO of Abercrombie and Fitch
6301 Fitch Path
New Albany
Ohio 43054
USA

11th May 2013

Dear Mr Jeffries

I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your helpful and up-building words to young men and women in the west.

As a youth worker, I spend a lot of time listening to the trivial  and disparaging woes of teenagers, and if they just understood that they will never belong with the “cool, good-looking people” then maybe I could catch a break.

If I could just explain to Tony as simply as you did that some people just “don’t belong” because they don’t have the “Washboard stomach” or look as if they’re “about to jump onto a surfboard” then maybe he will stop cutting himself. If I told Dory that she simply isn’t one of the “hot” or “cool kids … with a lot of friends” and simply isn’t supposed to fit into your “cute underwear for little girls” she will stop starving herself to death. Perhaps with that clarifying approach to social standards and self-esteem they will get on with life and succeed at whatever it is the sub-attractive people do. Working in an Cambodian A&F sweat shop perhaps?

If the young people that I work with every day just got that there’s an in and an out – and that they are out – then perhaps they would just stop trying, and get out of the beautiful people’s faces. As you so delicately put, they are not the people you want!

Perhaps it was the dim lights, the lack of air conditioning, the supermodel staff, the soft-pornography walls, or the purple haze of the latest scent – but when I was last in A&F I swear I had an out-of-body experience. Floating in a corner above the plus sizes (6 I believe?), and the ‘eye-candy’ labeled thongs in the kids section, I looked down at my self in horror! Not being one of the cool kids with my shock of ginger hair and lanky frame I realised I was trespassing on some exclusive nirvana, and I was dragging down the image of the store and the unsuspecting beautiful people within. Needless to say I left as quickly as I could without buying anything – as I’m sure you’ll appreciate.

So again, thank you. Thank you for being such an understanding, knowledgeable, experienced sage. Thank you for giving young boys and girls the crushing dose of reality that my counselling just doesn’t achieve. Thank you for dashing dreams, breaking hearts, locking doors and seeing that yet another generation grows up with fingers down their throats and photo-shopped pinups on their walls. Thank you for saying what needs to be said from your lofty position of popular culture. Thank you for continuing to make money the easiest way possible – by making teenagers afraid to be who they are and exploiting their fear. Thank you. perhaps now I will be able to get some much needed beauty sleep.

Yours sincerely

Tim Gough

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Other open letters online:

Andrea Neusner – Huffington Post

Sheila Moeschen – Huff Post Comedy