Abercromie Lawsuit

[sugar and spice]

Originally posted by texas*princess
I think there's a difference between an "image" and the context of the lawsuit.

Someone mentioned earlier something about Hot Topic. Anyone can put on some eyeliner and have that "look" ... but with a place like A+F, you can't just do something like that. Sure you could go to their store and spend thousands of dollars on clothes but you would never quite look like the waif models in the pictures.

At least that's my take on it.

That's what I was just going to say. If you're a crunchy granola type who wants to work at Sephora, you can slap on some makeup and pretty clothes and you'd at least have a chance at getting hired. If you're a preppy kid who wants to work at Hot Topic, you can put on some black clothes, some chains and some eyeliner and have a fighting chance. But if you're less-than-pretty and you want to work at A&F, you can't do anything short of major plastic surgery. There's a different between requiring a certain clothing style to work at a store and requiring a certain "look."

A&F is perhaps the most obvious utilizer of the "living advertisement," in that the employees in their store are intended to the serve the same purpose as their models. But what if every business decided to adopt this concept? People who were ugly wouldn't be able to get a job. That's why anti-discrimination laws were put in place to begin with -- so that people couldn't get passed over for jobs for something that had no influence on their ability to perform the tasks needed for the job. Being gorgeous has no influence on whether or not you can ring up clothes and fold sweaters.

I think that along with this lawsuit, we're going to see some kind of discussion on whether or not the "living advertisement" theory is valid. If Abercrombie claims that its employees serve the same purpose as its models, it is basically claiming that looks-ism (and in many cases, racism -- if blacks and Asians and Hispanics don't possess "the A&F look" they're SOL) is a valid basis for hiring policies, and this could set a precedent (either in favor or against) for other cases too.