Sex sells; or does it?

Abercrombie and Fitch is in the news again, a clothing retailer who targets the young and chiseled, yet excludes a large chunk of the population in larger sized women apparel. In 2006, CEO Mike Jeffries of A&F made the below comments;

“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. - Jeffries

Wow, did he really say that?  Now in 2013, according to a recent article in Forbes, sales are declining and are in the midst of closing 180 stores, almost 10 percent of its store base.  Are we finally seeing beyond the idol worship of the all-American body and blatant discrimination? In reality, this kind of body they promote probably accounts for less than 1 percent of the overall population. Yet our culture continues to market this tiny percent of the population yet leaving the majority in despair that they desire this idolized body. 

2 Story Idol of the male in A&F Singapore 

I took a look at some of their campaign images and found mainly male models, glossy, black and white photo shoots and lots of chiseled abs and crotch shots with open button jeans. Very little clothing can be seen while photo shoots included boy kissing boy, girl on top of boy (mostly no clothing), and 2 girls and a boy. In some of the group shots the models appeared to be loose and having fun. Their campaign is selling not only clothing but open sexuality; including homosexuality and multiple partners.  As an impressionable teenager or 20 something, who would not be attracted to this type of body and what they are promoting?  Heck, I would like to have that kind of body and I would be lying if I said I didn't find some of these models attractive.

The Blessed John Paul 11 called our current society, "the culture of death" which idolizes the human body instead of showing the body with dignity. With A&F's recent decline and apparent outrage of customer discrimination, maybe we can see a glimmer of light that points desire in another direction. Many of our desires point towards the things of this world of perfect bodies, money and materialistic needs. We need to use John Paul's Theology of the Body to point us to our true desires towards God.  As I love to quote C.S Lewis about desire. "If we have a desire which can not be fulfilled in this world, chances are those desires were made for another world."