If I wanted to, I could stand in an Abercrombie window and be the display myself. As a brand rep, I am dressed in the clothes I am meant to sell and therefore am constantly exploiting my body to earn an income. I am also relentlessly directing the male gaze while on the clock. Although a somewhat smart tactic on A&F’s party – women are constantly taught to focus on how they can appease a man via looks – I, and other employees like myself, are being manipulated to give off this message. I can’t help but feel that my job of selling the clothes off of my body to make a living, is too similar to prostitution.
During work hours, I’m wearing button-up blouses or tight t-shirts that make it impossible to hide my cleavage. If I were a sales girl in the early twentieth century, I would be in clothing that covered up my body versus garments that put it on a platter for public display. As I wondered this aloud during lunch to a fellow employee, we discussed how trends have become skimpier and skimpier. “The runways are full of breast-enhancing outfits,” she said. It hit me – women are attempting to mirror the trends they see the upperclass donning. These trends are trickling down into the mainstream and therefore, affecting even employee dress codes. Many of the A&F workers come to work in such tiny shorts that the lace of their underwear peaks out; I have never seen any of these women reprimanded for indecent exposure.
Clearly I am a marketing tool for Abercrombie & Fitch, being utilized to uphold these skimpier trends of late. The reason this upsets me is because I assumed this retail job meant needing to be a “people person,” a trait I stressed that I encompassed in the interview process for this position. As a walking mannequin that is only seen as valuable for what is on my outside, my communicative, interpersonal skills are mostly ignored. I have become a tool for this company to profit off of.
