On the Right - Show Your I.D. Before Reading . . .(Abercrombie and Fitch catalog nearly pornographic)(Brief Article)

NEW YORK, JUNE 19

I tend to lose my cell phone and so noticed a display ad for khaki pants with a compartment just below the right knee that is perfect for keeping electronic equipment, and that led me to Abercrombie & Fitch. I waited at the counter for my cargo (!) pants and looked down on the A&F summer catalogue featuring the usual handsome young man on the cover. But my attention was drawn to the subscription card alongside. "To subscribe: Fill out this card and head to the nearest A&F store with a valid photo ID." With a valid ID? I found that odd, and asked the young man behind the counter why IDs were required for subscribers to an Abercrombie & Fitch catalogue, and he said, "Well, uh, it's kind of porny inside."

I walked away with it, and now meditate on the reaches of the sexualization of our culture.

Presumably A&F's managers feel sure that the way to sell their current brand of clothing is to flaunt the modern dress. This presents a difficulty, inasmuch as clothiers live and die from the sale of clothes. But the current A&F catalogue goes far in suggesting that young men and women are better off wearing no clothes, which leaves the catalogue reader wondering what it is that A&F will make money from. Perhaps its catalogue, which of course is best advertised by the fiction that one really needs, in order to purchase it, an ID establishing that the purchaser is 18 years old.

The catalogue is introduced by a 150-word essay under the title, "The Pleasure Principle." A definition ensues: "in psychoanalysis, the tendency or drive to achieve pleasure and avoid pain as the chief motivating force in behavior." And then an amplification: "Summer being our favorite time of the year and all, we've worked extra hard to bring you our best issue yet by letting the pleasure principle be our guide through the hottest months."

The following page gives us a jaunty blonde clutching her hair, wet from the ocean she has just emerged from. If she is wearing ...