August 30, 2001

3:53 PM

Abercrombie & Fallacies“And there’s the group of guys playing football wearing only boxer shorts and boat shoes, because what self-respecting masculine guy wears shorts or a shirt, or needs any kind of traction on wet grass, when playing football?”
posted by joeclark (19 comments total)

So what's he saying, that A&F is portraying gay men in their catalogs? That he's pissed off at gay men now going incognito in baggy A&F clothes, when they used to be conspicuously dressed like Richard Simmons? Interesting read, but not much in it for this straight man.
posted by msacheson at 3:58 PM on August 30, 2001

Wait. Branding isn't reality?

Actually, there IS something distressing in this for me. As we all know (shut up! you know it's true!), at any point in time most straight men dress and are styled like gay men were three years ago (don't make me take you back to the 80s). The Abercrombie & Fitch power-homo marketing machine is reversing that vital flow of fashion by inducing the gay to dress like the straight.

What will straight men wear in three years? Now it will be what they were wearing all through college, because all the gay are currently clothed in straight-impersonating A&F. These poor straight men will become confused and most probably will venture about society completely nude.

Dear gays, please immediately remove those goddammed A&F shell necklaces before we have to rip them off. Do not interrupt the order of things: we need the straight people to have more gay babies, after all.
posted by RJ Reynolds at 4:08 PM on August 30, 2001

This has nothing to do with the A&F link, but joeclark's intro reminded me of when I was a youngin' and would sneak peeks at Playgirl. They always had pictures of buff young men tarring a roof in the nude. Or fighting a fire in the nude. Or doing construction work in the nude. For me, the ludicrous scenarios made the photos laughable instead of erotic. I always wondered, why didn't they pose the men languidly on a satin sheet, a la Playboy?
posted by Oriole Adams at 4:17 PM on August 30, 2001

YIKES!!! I just realized I'm wearing an A&F branded shirt at work today! I'm straight (my wife bought it for me), but now gay men will think I'm gay trying to look straight.
posted by msacheson at 4:21 PM on August 30, 2001

hmmm....maybe i should order that red smoking jacket out of international male then?
posted by lescour at 4:28 PM on August 30, 2001

so that's why I can't pick up a guy... they all think I'm straight. Of course.

Couldn't imagine why the would think that though, given the facts.

damn, life sucks. you can't act gay but look straight. you can't act straight but look gay. that's it, i'm wearing a giant rainbow "PRIDE" shirt tomorrow, damnit.
posted by benjh at 4:41 PM on August 30, 2001

gay men will think I'm gay trying to look straight

No, actually, gay men will think you look like a guy in an A&F t-shirt and then will decide based on how attractive you are whether you are worth approaching or not...

One the things that I've found interesting about the A&F trend is the shift in attitudes it may be signifying (at least, anectdotally): my sixteen year old (straight) nephew wears their stuff; he mentioned that several guys he knows at school that are gay do as well. I asked him if that bothered him, that by everybody wearing those same T-shirts and whathaveyou, wouldn't everybody think maybe HE'S gay, too? "What the f*ck? They're just T-shirts that everybody wears - what does that have to do with being straight or gay?" Perhaps sexual-branding-via-attire will be a thing of the past a generation from now?
posted by m.polo at 4:45 PM on August 30, 2001

whoa whoa... A&F sells boat shoes now? Is the quality better or worse then Top Sider's? These are the questions that need to be answered!
posted by geoff. at 4:59 PM on August 30, 2001

What?! A&F is aimed at gay men?! Somebody tell the Lt. Governor of Illinois, since she thinks they're aimed -- like Joe Camel -- at high school kids. Disturbingly, she's able to use a state webserver supported by my tax dollars to organize a boycott.

"A&F is increasing the nudity and the sexual content with each catalog it prints. In fact, the summer catalog features 35% more nudity than did its spring edition, and that catalog was titled "XXX," and featured a graphic interview with a male porn star."
posted by dhartung at 5:18 PM on August 30, 2001

Hmm, I'm a straight high school male, and I'm wearing A&F boxers right now... I have a pair of pants and shorts by them too. I think a wide variety of people wear the stuff - sexual orientation has never entered my mind when I see it.
posted by swank6 at 5:26 PM on August 30, 2001

"Yeah, gray, drab green and muted orange are real winners."

Don't diss my earthtones, man. I'll take them over flamboyancy any day.
posted by tomorama at 5:31 PM on August 30, 2001

I've seen the opposite too. Now *straight* guys are wearing Banana Republic clothing. I think my gaydar needs to be recalibrated.
posted by UWliberal at 6:43 PM on August 30, 2001

I've never even heard of A&F. Of course, I live in Taiwan, but the most 'fashionable' things I have are a couple of Tommy Hilfiger jackets I wear during the two months it gets below 20 C here.

But why do people assume that gay men must dress differently, act differently, etc. from straight guys anyway? Is it that the straight community feels more comfortable when there's some sort of physical indicator for gay people? Do they feel safer? What?
posted by Poagao at 8:34 PM on August 30, 2001

Wow I haven't heard of clothes "marking" the man since I was in elementary school when if you wore green and yellow on a thursday you were called a fruit and possibly chased around the swing set.
posted by cmacleod at 9:51 PM on August 30, 2001

Poagao, I think there are different styles of dress within different communities. In New York, there is a relatively large, organized gay community, and like any culture, it has a style of clothing that is its own. That doesn't mean that every gay man wears his hair a certain way, or a certain kind of pants, but there are trends within peer groups.
It isn't that people assume that gay men must dress differently, but that many gay men actually do dress differently than the average straight man. And, really, they should, considering how poorly the average american male dresses.
posted by Doug at 10:12 PM on August 30, 2001

...many gay men actually do dress differently than the average straight man.

What this actually makes me think of is how sad it is that most of us give up the joy of clothing after, say, the age of 21. And my fear is that the kids today don't get to have that pleasure.

Remember the things you used to wear? Sure they would be umm hideous now. But, even though I graduated high school in 1989, not REALLY so long ago as I keep telling myself, we didn't really have The Gap in full effect. There wasn't the massive branding campaign of the ghoul, AKA Calvin Klein. So what we wore either meant something to us culturally (punk), or for some it was "just clothes", and for others it was just what we could afford.

Now, my point is: is the love of fashion and "personal care" a kind of vain self-infantilization by the gays? Or is it more broad, something for the childless non-home-owning (read: cash rich) urban culture, gay or not gay?

And I think swank6 is right: these things don't read as gay for the kids today. Which is kind of cool. Back in my day, sonny, we got our asses kicked for wearing the faggy clothes. That concludes me acting like someone's idiot grandfather, I'm sorry. Anyway, maybe this all points to the important dissolution of gaiety. Not a moment too soon!
posted by RJ Reynolds at 10:39 PM on August 30, 2001

Not that this topic hasn't been done here recently...

June 15, 2001

June 22, 2001
posted by stevis at 10:44 PM on August 30, 2001

From my limited experience in New York, I can see your point. The winter day in 1999 I arrived there from Taiwan, I was wearing what I usually wear here in Taipei on really cold days, i.e. baggy old green cargo pants, a flannel plaid shirt, brown nikes, a big, bright yellow hilfiger jacket a friend had given me and a baseball cap to keep my head warm.

When I got to where I was going to be staying, with what was probably one of the few Chinese families living in the Puerto Rican neighborhood near the Myrtle Ave station on the L line in Brooklyn, I discovered to my surprise that nearly everyone on the street were dressed like me. It was really eerie.

When I got to Manhattan, where I was attending film school, it was a completely different scene. I found that to be true when I ventured to various neighborhoods as well.

I guess AF happened after I left, though, as I really have never heard of it. Either that or I'm really not into that style. I still don't see why there should be any difference between the way gay people dress and the way straight people dress. Neither one has a monopoly on fashion sense, after all.
posted by Poagao at 12:07 AM on August 31, 2001

Stevis, this thread isn't about the A&F boycott, so I think it's okay.
posted by jennak at 10:57 AM on August 31, 2001