Comments on: “Girl-Cott” succeeds in pulling sexist t-shirts off shelves (and there’s a contest)

By: HC

HC — Tue, 15 Nov 2005 05:33:37 +0000

Girl-cott? This is the sort of etymological blindness that leads to headaches and a strobing pain in the temples - the eponymous man originally so shunned was Captain Charles Boycott. It’s herstory repeating itself…

By: RonF

RonF — Mon, 14 Nov 2005 23:39:28 +0000

Free Republic, the conservative web site, has picked this up. The posters are so far uniformly positive, due to the facts that a) they also think these slogans are offensive, and b) the young ladies are using market forces and their First Amendment rights to get A&F to reconsider, as opposed to going to the courts.

By: The Countess

The Countess — Thu, 10 Nov 2005 01:46:00 +0000

Thanks for the link, Amp. I’m getting lots of great slogans. It’s going to be hard to pick a winner. What’s even more cool is that I’m going to buy some new X-rated chocolate molds in a couple of weeks. I found some great ones with people in … er … compromising positions. :-)

By: Kevin T. Keith

Kevin T. Keith — Tue, 08 Nov 2005 22:09:57 +0000

The whole thing may have been a setup, or at least they chose to let it play out as one when the controversy began. A&F has a history of provocative ads, and each one generates tons of news coverage and millions of Web site visits. Then they pull the offensive material, and their detractors claim victory and figure it’s OK to by A&F clothes now - which they are primed to do after having seen them on the Web sites.

They’ve done it several times now (remember the “Wong Brothers Laundry” Chinese stereotype T-shirts?). Either it’s deliberate, or they’re at least just taking a flyer on the offensive material, selling it if it sells and writing it off as a loss leader if all it does is generate press coverage. They win either way - and have no incentive to stop doing these things.