Media #9

http://www.tolerance.org/news/article_hate.jsp?id=603
This article is about how Target has recently put new items on their shelves. A man who had been shopping in the store was attracted to a pair of red shorts he found on the rack. He saw the “88” symbol on the shorts and was immediately shocked. He knew what the “88” meant and he was surprised to see them in Target. The symbol stands for “Heil Hitler”. The man immediately reported this to the store manager in Sacramento because they had not been so quick to pick up on what it meant. The manager just told the man that they keep whatever the head person of the company sends them, and that was that. When the man had sent a letter to the head of Target, he was disappointed. The head replied “We recognize not all of our guests will agree with our decision to sell certain kinds of merchandise,” wrote a Guest Relations employee identified only as “Eileen.””. She continued to say it was the guests’ choice to purchase the merchandise. This article is showing that the man who found the merchandise was offended because of what was written on the article of clothing.
A related article is the one written by McBride. It details why the author doesn’t like the company Abercrombie and Fitch. The author writes, “Abercrombie and Fitch has devised a very clear marketing and advertising strategy that celebrates whiteness- a particularly privileged and leisure class whiteness…” (66). It is interesting that the author would write this because it agrees with the man from Target. Both of them don’t like the idea that certain clothing is targeted toward certain people. Everyone should be able to wear what they want without feeling weird or different because they aren’t dressed like their friends. It is hard to keep up with fashion on all the time. With some people also wearing symbols on their clothing and not knowing what it means could hurt other people who do know what it means, like the shorts from target. It can be offensive to certain groups of people if another group is supposedly “wearing their clothes”. Yes, clothes do make a person who they are, but people should not b e put down based on what they are wearing.
I personally feel it is people’s choice to wear what they want to wear. I wear flat billed hats, which are generally targeted toward black people. I like wearing the hats and it makes me different from other people and I like it. There should be no discrimination against people who want to wear what they want and no certain clothing should be targeted toward a certain group.