Fat-shaming gets me on a gut level. I hate it, I’d like it to go away, and the recent statements of CEO of clothing store Abercrombie & Fitch, which included this little gem:

In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids,” he told the site. “Candidly, we go after the cool kids. We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. A lot of people don’t belong [in our clothes], and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely. Those companies that are in trouble are trying to target everybody: young, old, fat, skinny. But then you become totally vanilla. You don’t alienate anybody, but you don’t excite anybody, either.”

…get to me. Which is to say, I really don’t like A&F.

And this doesn’t seem to be an unpopular opinion. Obviously I carefully cultivate the people I interact with, but the scandal has been scorching the internet.

General social justice conclusion? Refusing to sell your clothes in plus-sizes because you think it’s bad for business is a jerk move.

Ooookay, abrupt topic shift.

Remember that time some MIT students set up hobojacket.com, this hilllllarious site where you could pay to give homeless people a sweatshirt from a rival college? And then lots of people said “Hey! Maybe using people as props in an argument that doesn’t involve them is a terrible move that we want to discourage!” …and then hobojacket.com stopped existing and the creator apologized? Man, that was a nice day for internet activism.

Keeping that in mind, let’s talk about Abercrombie & Fitch and this video. In it, the narrator hands out A&F clothing to the homeless.

At first, they seemed reluctant to accept the clothing. Perhaps they were concerned about being percieved as narcissistic date rapists?

[…]

Together, we can make Abercrombie & Fitch the world’s number one brand of homeless apparel!

See! Get it! Because homeless people are uncool icky and it’s like, revenge, to give them clothes from a company that wants cool people! /sarcasm

Would someone like to explain how this is better than the MIT students ‘prank? It’s not because you’re fighting against a fat-shaming company. You’re still ignoring the humanity of a whole sector of people who won’t see any benefit from A&F suddenly selling hundred dollar artfully distressed jeans in XXL.Stop pretending like it’s a big win for equality when you’re stepping on people to make a point.