Abercrombie CEO Pretty Much Hates Fat Girls

Has this sparked all sorts of outrage! I wished with all of my might that Abercrombie and Fitch’s CEO Mike Jeffries had his words twisted around because I didn’t want to believe someone could be this shallow, but everything I’ve read points to this being truth and that’s pretty sad.

Robin Lewis, co-author of The New Rules of Retail and CEO of The Robin Report told Business Insider: "He (Mike Jeffries) doesn't want larger people shopping in his store, he wants thin and beautiful people. He doesn't want his core customers to see people who aren't as hot as them wearing his clothing. People who wear his clothing should feel like they're one of the 'cool kids.'"

In a 2006 interview with Salon, Jeffries himself said that his business was built around sex appeal.

It’s almost everything. That’s why we hire good-looking people in our stores. Because good-looking people attract other good-looking people, and we want to market to cool, good-looking people. We don’t market to anyone other than that. In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids. Candidly, we go after the cool kids. We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. A lot of people don’t belong [in our clothes], and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely.

A&F offers clothing sized XL and XXL for men, but not for women and women’s pant sizes only go to a size 10.

It’s not so much the exclusion of larger sized clothing in the store that bothers me as it is the CEO, through his words, is spreading the idea to our kids who shop in his stores that plus size girls aren’t cool and shouldn’t be part of the “in” crowd. Is that really the message we want to send to our kids?

Sources: Business Insider, Elite Daily, International Design Times, Salon