Going for the Look

Essay written for this article on job discrimination

Going for the Look, but Risking Discrimination

As a consumer society, retail advertisement rules our lives. Commercials and ads tell us what to do, what to eat and how to dress. Companies hire people that they think will represent their brand in the best way. But do companies sometimes discriminate in the way they go about it?

For the record, it should be impossible for job hiring discrimination to happen because there are laws against discriminating against someone on the basis of age, sex or ethnicicity.

The retail clothing company Abercrombie and Fitch supposedly does not discriminate on the basis of ethnicity. Tom Lennox, an Abercrombie communications director has denied allegations of job bias, but he did admit that his company liked to hire “brand representatives” that projected their image; people who they thought looked great. The problem is however, that what someone believes to look good may have implications on someone else’s ethnicity.

So then, what does Abercrombie believe to look “good”? Well, if you’ve ever gone into an Abercrombie and Fitch store, you’ve probably seen those massive photograph posters of A&F models. Most of them tend to be young, fit, attractive, and white. Now, it could totally be a coincidence that all of their models are white; but the company has taken heat for the image they project.

Some Asian, black and Hispanic job applicants have sued Abercrombie on the basis of racial discrimination; citing being directed to working in the back instead of the front of the store.

Abercrombie has also been slammed elsewhere for their seemingly biased hiring policies. On Seth MacFarlane’s hit TV Series Family Guy, we are shown a sequence in which two of the main characters are looking through an Abercrombie and Fitch catalogue. The two characters look for diversity in the catalogue as if they were trying to find Waldo.

As strong as the case is that I have made against Abercrombie and Fitch, I must offer one last twist as my opinion on the subject. Retail companies are in the right to hire whoever they want, because the future of their company is at stake; they need to project an image that appeals to the targeted range of their customers. But doing so in a discriminatory way is wrong. But then again, maybe, just maybe, in the case of Abercrombie and Fitch, it’s only a happy coincidence.

ERW Vivid Childhood Memory, final.

I used to hate reading; as funny as that may sound right now. The fact that I’m in an expository reading and writing class would serve to contradict that. But now, I love reading and writing. I love the sense of accomplishment I get from finishing an exceptionally long novel. I love that indescribable feeling I get from sharing ideas with other writers. I love how reading inspires the imagination and makes you think. This is the story of how it all started.

My family, both from my mother and father’s sides come from a country in South East Asia that takes up over 7,000 islands in the Philippine Sea. They immigrated here to the US sometime in the 80’s. I guess life on a farm in the Philippines was pretty hard. So they sold everything they had, and decided to pursue a dream in the land of opportunity. My mother only had the opportunity to go to college for one year, back in the Philippines. But she had to quit to help support her family. When she had time though, there was one thing that she loved to do; read books.

It was my mother that started me on reading books. Keep in mind that I grew up as a kid in the nineties, so there was no shortage of cartoons to keep kids like me entertained. One night before bedtime, she pulled out a book, and told me that she was going to start reading to me. I objected of course, content to just watch late night television; she persisted though, much to my dismay. When I look back on it now, I’m glad that she began reading to me against my will. I have no idea if I ever would have picked up on reading if she had never done it for me.

My mother read to me that night. I became fascinated by the story that flowed off the books many pages. By the time she kissed me good night and turned off the light, my mind was racing. I stared up at the green glow in the dark stars that peppered the ceiling of my room. I was hooked; I couldn’t wait until the next time she would read to me again. Eventually, I started reading on my own. My mother would take me to the library, and I would check out stacks of books that were probably taller than me. I wish you could have seen the look on the librarian’s face when I walked up to the check out counter with my stack of books..

I remember checking out all manner of books. Books about the mechanics of flight and airplanes shared space next to copies of Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham and The Cat in the Hat. As I got older, naturally I progressed onto harder and longer books. I remember reading the first of the Harry Potter series. Reading naturally gave way to writing. I remember a day in elementary school, when I had to write a story for an assignment; it was my story that really caught my teacher’s eye. She even went through the trouble of calling my mother into her class and telling her that I was reading at a high school level. At least that’s what I remember.

The impact of that first bed time story is still felt, even today. Just look at where I am now. When my mother first read to me that night, I couldn’t have imagined that I’d be taking this class ten years later. Reading books and writing have become a major part of my life. I can’t imagine life without both; it certainly would be very different from what it’s like now. It has all led me to think and question everything, it’s taught me to think for myself. All of this is thanks to my mother, who, one night cracked open a book for me. It was a book that would open up the whole world to me.

Reading+Writing=Thinking

Today, I want to talk about how awesome reading and writing is. Thanks to freedom of press and speech, that we have here in the United States, you are allowed to say what you want when you want. This allows people to share ideas. It allows everyone the oppurtinity to further their knowledge. This in turn allows free thinking. Without it, the world we know now could have born a resemblance to the bleak existences we are shown in George Orwell's 1984 and V for Vendetta. The General populace is controlled and oppressed. The media is controlled, those that speak out against the government "disappear".

Having this freedom to read and write whatever you please has it's downsides though. There are some ideas, caused, possibly by people with way too much time on their hands, that are allowed to be born. Even worse yet, people begin to believe. They take up arms in the name of a movement, mislead though they be. They claim that they believe, but are actually allowing themselves to be taken over, they are not thinking free. Let's take for example, the 9/11 Truth Movement. They reject the mainstream account of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. They think the US Government had a hand in the attack. Madness. Even worse still is the people who spout out "9/11 was an inside job!"

Right, and Vikings were the first explorers to visit the moon. But that is what's great about writing. We have the opportunity to write and express our ideas, regardless of how far fetched they may sound. And, we have the opportunity to express a contradictory idea; an idea that makes more sense, and that, in most cases, is accepted as the truth.
-Yvan

Read. Write. Think.

The purpose of this blog is to make you read, inspire you to write, then, hopefully think for yourself. You may not sometimes like what I'm saying, but that's fine. Writing is about respecting differing viewpoints from yours. Your opinions will be listened to, and respected. Enjoy.