#karber

Abercrombie & Fitch CEO, Mike Jeffries:

"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."

While I can appreciate a person who speaks the truth, even if it is somewhat hurtful, one cannot just say that they are being purposefully discriminatory and expect everyone to let it slide without backlash. 

As a rebuttal against the company's non-inclusive stance, writer, Greg Karber, launched a campaign that encourages ex-Abercrombie customers to give their A&F clothing to the homeless as a mode of rebranding the company.

Using the hashtag, #FitchtheHomeless, Karber is calling on the nation to donate their clothes and then share what they've done on social media. 

Karber's ultimate goal is to make the clothing brand "the world's number one brand of homeless apparel". 

While I have a deep dislike for Abercrombie and Fitch as much as any other 20-something who grew up wasting hard earned money on a t-shirt just because it said "FITCH" across the chest, I have a bone to pick with Karber's campaign. 

Karber says himself that he is not looking to exploit the homeless but when looking at the motives of the campaign in a critical light, it is undeniably exploitative of the homeless community as a whole. When you push aside the warm fuzzies of seeing people in need getting new clothing alongside an alluring rebellion against "the Man" that is discriminative corporate clothing brands, you see some more problematic themes running through the campaign.

Karber wants homeless people to become the new face of the clothing brand, which means he wants Abercrombie & Fitch to be associated with homelessness as a form of "punishment" for the brand. This reinstates society's generally negative perspective of the homeless as being dirty, undesirable, and a highly stigmatized people that can rightfully be associated with what society naturally wants to repel; corporate injustice.

The true injustice to me is that Karber places a label on the homeless community; a label that reads this group as one of docile bodies that can be defined in whatever way us "privileged" folk want, all as a leverage of rebellion.