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©
Paola Canti and Billberry Photography. Images from BigStockPhoto.com
By J. Scott Askew
The way you dress is a reflection
of what you are on the inside. Your dress and grooming send messages
about you to others and influence the way you and others act.
“For the Strength of Youth,” p. 14.
You are what you wear. Not long ago,
I saw two startling examples. A criminal defendant, charged with
drunk driving, came to court to enter his plea. To the astonishment
of everyone in the courtroom, he wore a tee-shirt advertising a
popular beer brand. Didn’t he realize the inappropriateness
of his shirt? Amid snickers in the courtroom, the annoyed judge
sternly warned the defendant to dress differently for his next court
appearance.
Later that same week, a couple of teenage
girls were at the gym. One was dressed in loose-fitting sweat pants
and a baggy t-shirt — quite modest compared to the popular
“spandex and skin” look. But printed on her t-shirt
were a woman’s silhouette and the brand name “Hustler.”
I was shocked that a young girl would wear that shirt. What was
she thinking?
Does she know that Hustler
magazine graphically displays deviant sexual behavior? Does she
know that its founder Larry Flynt is the most notorious pornographer
in U.S. history? Did it occur to her that she was a walking billboard
for sleaze and aggressive sexual behavior? Did she realize her shirt
invites assumptions about her sexual attitudes? Do her parents know
she owns that shirt?
Pornographic Marketing of Apparel
— A Case Study
Most parents wouldn’t let their
children wear pornographic brand clothing. Or would they?
Recently, the manager of an Abercrombie
& Fitch store in Virginia was criminally cited for obscenity.
Local police received complaints about explicit photographs displayed
in the A&F store. Upon investigation, an officer found two offending
posters — one a picture of a shirtless male model exposing
the top of his buttocks and another of a topless woman partially
covering her breasts with her hands.
The police officer determined that
the posters violated the city’s obscenity ordinance, and warned
the manager to remove them.
When the officer returned a day or
two later, the pictures were still displayed. So he issued a citation
and confiscated the posters. The national media widely reported
the incident.
So why didn’t A&F remove
the posters? Because A&F profits greatly from its longstanding
use of sex and pornography to market its apparel. The controversy
immediately generated national publicity. A&F received millions
of dollars worth of free advertising from the news media, as thousands
of customers visited the nearest store to check out the revealing
pictures.
It may seem illogical that the best
way to sell clothing is to show models not wearing any — especially
when the clothing itself is reasonably modest. But it’s hard
to argue with the financial results. In 2007, A&F sales were
$3.75 billion, up 13% from 2006, in an otherwise tough market for
the apparel industry. A recent business article referred to A&F’s
success as “genius.”
The incident in Virginia is hardly
the first time A&F has come under fire for sexualized marketing.
In 2002, A&F marketed pre-teen thong underwear printed with
suggestive phrases such as “eye candy.” In recent years,
A&F t-shirts have caused controversy by referencing such topics
as incest and women’s breasts.
A&F’s most infamous venture
into pornography was its quarterly catalog, discontinued after the
Christmas 2003 edition caused a huge uproar. That edition featured
45 pictures of nude or semi-nude models and did not begin advertising
clothing until page 120. The pictures portrayed group sex, gay kissing,
and teenage sexual activity.
And as if the pictures were not enough,
an article in the catalog encouraged a variety of sexual experimentation.
Despite A&F’s claim that the magazine was sold only to
adults, the attorney general of one state documented sales to pre-teens.
The catalog was discontinued after a pro-family group published
a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal aimed at informing
A&F investors of a boycott.
So what’s next for A&F? It
recently announced the creation of a line of lingerie to be sold
in a new store targeting its young customer base. It’s hard
to imagine how revealing that marketing campaign will be. And A&F
has announced that its controversial catalog will be made available
once again in the United Kingdom.
Although A&F is definitely a high-profile
apparel industry leader in pornographic marketing, it is hardly
alone. For many years, fashion magazines have contained revealing
and sexualized photographs. Recently, a French apparel company decided
to include graphic sexual videos on its website as a part of its
marketing campaign. For years, Victoria’s Secret’s racy
television commercials have caused a stir.
How tempting are profits from sexualized
marketing? In 2007, a Utah County billboard for a purportedly modest
shirt company resorted to innuendo, featuring “tease”
(a clever play on “t-shirts’) and the tag line “cover
your assets” next to a drawing of a woman pulling down a long
shirt over her emphasized backside.
What are LDS Consumers Doing
(or Wearing)?
When it comes to A&F, some pro-family
and religious groups have been pro-active. Citizens for Community
Values published the Wall Street Journal advertisement
that put at least a temporary end to the A&F catalog. The National
Coalition for the Protection of Children and Families, the American
Decency Association and Focus on the Family all have been vocal
critics. Bob Jones University and other religious schools have forbidden
A&F apparel on their campuses or have boycotted A&F.
What about the LDS community?
For years LDS consumers have complained
that it was difficult to find modest apparel. Low-rise pants, short-shorts
and immodest tops made shopping difficult even for young girls.
The bare-midriff problem was so pervasive that a friend once told
me that he was tired of having to avert his eyes when he walked
down the hall in church.
However, apparel companies make a lot
of money when styles change every year. For the past two years,
industry-wide fashions have been their most modest in decades. Understandably,
LDS consumers have been elated, with many more choices for modest
apparel in many locations. But the shift towards modesty is temporary.
Fashions will inevitably and quickly cycle back to less modest styles.
Although LDS apparel consumers focus
on modesty, pornographic advertising is rarely considered. A few
years ago my wife and I were asked to speak to a group of business
students at Brigham Young University. Among the topics we discussed
was pornography in the apparel industry. Many students to whom we
spoke wore clothing displaying the A&F brand name. Many more
were wearing A&F apparel with the label safely hidden inside.
Can you imagine the reaction of the Honor Code office if one of
those students had come to class in a Playboy shirt? A&F
shirts are different only in degree, yet they can be seen all over
the BYU campus.
It is true that, as compared to direct
sellers of pornography like Playboy, pornography by apparel
retailers is secondary to its primary purpose of selling clothing.
But does it matter whether pornography is sold as the primary product,
or whether it is given for free in the effort to sell a different
product? Maybe the only difference between wearing a Hustler
t-shirt and an A&F t-shirt is that parents don’t know
that A&F is a pornographer.
Church leaders do not tell Church members
where to shop. They teach correct principles and let LDS consumers
govern themselves. Church members are sensitive to whether apparel
is modest, but many patronize retailers that profit from pornographic
and sexualized marketing. Perhaps we could do better in our self-governance.
Why do LDS Consumers Tolerate
Pornographic Marketing?
I once asked my uncle, a stake president
in Utah, the biggest problem he faced with the members of his stake.
Before I could finish the question, he replied “Pornography.”
How do Mormons view the pornography epidemic?
With moral issues, Church members tend
to focus on personal righteousness and Church activity, rather than
community activism. Abortion is a good example. Church members are
firmly anti-abortion, but you don’t see anyone in your ward
organizing a picket of Planned Parenthood.
If you ask a Church member to describe
the problem of pornography and its solution, the answer may be,
“Pornography is the sin of someone viewing pornographic images,
and the solution is repentance.” Conversely stated, this is
the same as saying, “Pornography is not my issue because I
don’t view it.”
But that attitude ignores two truths
when purchasing and wearing apparel from companies that use pornographic
marketing. First, we send the message to our family, friends, co-workers,
acquaintances and strangers that we support the brand image even
if pornographic. Second, we tell the pornographer that their immoral
advertising works.
If you ask an anti-pornography activist
outside the Church the same question, the response may be that pornography
is the widespread dissemination of pornographic images; that it
adversely affects the community; and that the solution is to create
a social, economic and political climate that makes it difficult
for the pornographer to do business. This broad view acknowledges
we tolerate our pornographic environment, and that we have the power
and responsibility to change it.
Maybe Church members are not more involved
in the community on moral issues because we are defeatist. Since
we believe that the world will become ever-increasingly evil, do
we accept too easily that community standards will deteriorate?
Can Church Members Change the
Apparel Industry?
Worldwide fashion trends have never
been caused by an LDS teenager writing a complaint letter to Dillard’s.
That kind of activism may occasionally catch the attention of a
public relations department or make the newspaper, but has no impact
on fashion trends, production or marketing.
The apparel industry is dominated by
profit-driven, publicly-traded companies that have no institutional
sense of morality. Fashions originate in a handful of world cities,
where young adult women create trends followed by fashion designers
and mass-market apparel producers.
Most of the resulting apparel is produced
by conglomerates that make huge quantities of clothing for international
distribution. They are not concerned with the needs and desires
of local communities, and will continue to sell immodest styles
and advertise using pornography so long as it is profitable.
If LDS consumers are to have any impact
on apparel trends and advertising, it will only be through economic
power. But Church members are an insignificantly small percentage
of the global customer base of major apparel producers. A&F
is unlikely to change its marketing strategies even if no Church
member ever bought another A&F product.
LDS consumers, however, are not completely
helpless. Where there are large concentrations of Church members,
LDS consumers have enough economic strength to prevent objectionable
retailers or brands from doing business in their community. Although
A&F may never change its advertising in response to LDS consumers,
it would not keep open its Provo, Utah, store for very long if no
LDS teenager or college student ever shopped there.
LDS consumers also can use their economic
power to support the fledgling modest apparel industry. Modest clothing
companies, mostly based in Utah, have sprung up over the past ten
years in response to immodest trends. These companies have as core
principles modesty both in product and marketing.
Right now modest clothing companies
are boutiques, not a large-scale alternative for LDS consumers.
These companies are generally small, family-owned and under-capitalized.
They lack economies of scale in production and advertising, and
suffer from lack of brand awareness and acceptance. Their product
lines are limited and wide-scale distribution is difficult. And
in the past two years, the modest apparel industry has been weakened
by LDS consumers taking advantage of the temporary trend toward
modesty in the larger apparel industry.
What would happen if Church members
shifted their economic weight behind the modest apparel industry?
If every dollar spent by LDS consumers with pornographic apparel
producers instead flowed to the modest apparel industry, that industry
would multiply many times — directly benefiting LDS consumers.
Both the number of products and the
ability to distribute those products would increase. Over time,
the modest apparel companies could provide all kinds of modest apparel
for the entire family without pornographic or sexualized marketing.
With the help of LDS consumers, eventually
some modest apparel companies might grow big enough to attract the
attention of the larger industry, which always looks to acquire
up-and-coming brands or imitate new niche markets. With their money,
LDS consumers could eventually demonstrate to the apparel industry
that there is a profitable segment of consumers who warrant modest
clothing without pornographic marketing.
So, what’s in your closet?
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Meridian Magazine.
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