Getting Fitched out

I wonder if Ernest Hemingway would wear an Abercrombie and Fitch vintage fit T-shirt with a pair of saranac destroyed boot-cut jeans. My guess is he'd be too confused by the name to even try them on. Well, that's OK because the century-old company doesn't clothe scholars like him anymore. They dress college students.\nAnd the clothing company has a certain kind of student in mind: young, muscular, white males. They're all over the catalogs. Young white females are there, too, but they're hugely outnumbered. But the key word here is white, and the company is in trouble over it. \nThe one time I walked into an A&F, there were four white men and one white woman working. They looked like the models in the catalogs, only fully clothed. And this is what angered Asian and Hispanic groups last June when they filed a lawsuit against the company arguing that it hires a mostly white sales staff and excludes minorities. The suit was settled Nov. 15.\nA lawsuit was bound to happen sooner or later. It seems like every A&F catalog has been the cause of some debate, but for good reason. Almost every page shows half-naked white guys posing seductively. Online, I found an ad with a black guy in it looking awkward. I'm guessing it was relatively new. \nThe stores themselves are also very uninviting for minorities. Right when you walk in you're being stared at by a wall-size poster of the A&F image -- a white guy. All the other pictures on the walls of the store are of white people, too. This made me immediately uncomfortable. Everyone shopping in the store looked like the catalog models. I couldn't tell the shoppers apart from the sales staff. Anyway, I rushed my way through the store and then quickly left. I was relieved to be out, and I don't know why. Being at IU, I'm used to being the only minority in a room. But I'm pretty sure it was the combination of dark lighting, loud music and huge pictures of semi-nude white models. The mystery continues. But the case against A&F is over. \nA settlement of $40 million ended the lawsuit that expanded to include thousands of black, Asian and Hispanic employees and applicants. The money will be split between each member of the suit. The company claims it always had no tolerance for discrimination and decided to settle to avoid a long suit. Yeah, or it knew it was going to lose. \nThe lawsuit also called for making A&F's marketing strategies more diverse. A store shouldn't just market a product to one race, and A&F finally got called out for it. Even though there's no sign outside the store saying "white models only," it sure felt that way. As a result of the settlement, the chain can no longer focus all its marketing on white college students. It must include images of minorities in its catalogs and advertisements. But I don't know how this will go over with shoppers. If all of a sudden the next A&F catalog comes out and there are minorities on every other page, people are going to react. Loyal shoppers might not like the changes, and minorities might think A&F is trying too hard for their attention.\nThe company is always surrounded by controversy and this discrimination suit isn't helping. In stores, sales are down 13 percent, and its stock is down 16 percent, likely due to parent protests urging Americans not to buy their clothes until they tone down the sexuality in the catalogs. \nTimes have changed but A&F hasn't, really. It started more than 100 years ago as an outdoors clothing store for white men, and now it's ... well, pretty much the same thing, except the clothes are trendier.