Sunday, May 12, 2013

Letter to Mike Jeffries

So here's the news article that inspired this rant.

Dear Mike,

Hi, my name is Joy. I'm solidly a size 14, 16 depending on the maker. A week and a half ago, it came out that you mentioned that you don't want women, or girls my size wearing clothes. We're not cool, or pretty, or exclusive enough for your brand.

Well, really, lets just be honest, we're not thin enough for your brand. No fat people allowed. Got it. Lots of people have written letters shaming you (well deserved imo) but I'm not going to do that, I'm just going to point out that you're in fantasy land dude.

You equate being fat with being ugly, unpopular, uncool. Well I admit, I don't know a lot about pop culture and if you give me a choice of listening to Drake or Rihanna vs the 80's, the latter is going to win. That may be uncool in your books, but really, one persons cool is another persons boredom. See, I'd be bored to tears sitting, and talking about ones latest material object, or wine trip, or their latest name drop. I tried that life, it was never my cup of tea. I'd rather talk about social issues, or nerd culture, or get to the depths of someone's twisted humour.

In your world, this would probably have you thinking that I sit at home with fourteen cats, lots of knitting and very little friends. But I have to break it to you, I crochet, I only have two cats (and an awesome snake) and I have a lot of friends. Your next bet is that they're all pathetic losers, but you'd be wrong again. Many of them would probably be people you'd want in your brand, but guess what? They want nothing to do with you. Why? Because of a lovable uncool fat woman like me, and many other lovable uncool fat women like me.

You see, in one fell swoop, you've seriously limited yourself. You assumed that by making the cool kids all the more exclusive, that they'd be great with that, but you're selling a lot of your target market short. I have a lot of "cool" friends and they're appalled with you. They wouldn't touch your brand with a ten foot pole because they're not that shallow. They don't appreciate you dissing the rest of us great unwashed because if you had bothered to stoop so low, you'd find out that we're pretty awesome people. Those of us who are cool with the way we are, we don't put this pressure on people to squeeze into a tiny ideal of coolness. We don't require our friends to be a size 10 and under, and not surprisingly that garners a lot of friends and most importantly, the right type of friends.

I am lucky, I am blessed to have lots of great friends, they come in all shapes and sizes, from all walks of life. They value hard work, honesty and seeing beyond the superficial things in life. They are the type of customer you want because these are quality people, these are people I'd be proud to have to wear my brand, if I had one...I should!

So I'm writing to tell you that you missed the ball big time! Not only have you written off awesome people such as myself, but you have written off awesome people such as my friends who don't take kindly to your fat shaming. It's your loss man, and I'm just someone who works in the undervalued field of helping others in trouble, but it seems to me that it's a pretty dumb marketing move. I can't say I'll cry if your brand goes under, but since I have a hard time keeping my mouth shut, I just thought I'd let you know how I feel and the impact you're having in my little end of the world. Which is to say that beyond this blog post, doesn't affect me much, but it will affect you, hopefully you'll be able to see beyond the dollar signs to understand how, but if not, I'll just have to live that this will teach you a hard lesson financially, and if that's the only way you'll learn from it, so bet it.

Otherwise, I wish you well, I wish you the types of quality people I have in my life in yours, you sure could use them.

Sincerely,

Joy