Since I can’t get worked up enough about the latest Fed minutes (short story: Mr. Market is unhappy because he wants his QE and doesn’t see evidence that it is imminent), it might instead be worth examining something quite curious: that Ambercrombie & Fitch is having trouble making sex sell.
You have to understand what a total fail that is. The advertising industry is largely devoted to using sex, either overtly or covertly, to get consumers to buy stuff. This is most true for products like clothing for target customers under, say, 50, cosmetics, and accessories. Just flip through the front of a Vanity Fair or a fashion magazine. I avoid them precisely because you get an overload of messages of how cool it would be to be somebody else. For women, that’s a size two woman with pouty lips and often drugged out looking eyes whose life aspiration is to be kept by (and per the subtext of some ads, dominated by) a rich man (as in they are clearly attired in a manner they couldn’t pay for themselves). The message for men is a bit more confused. You now see men treated as sex objects too, starting with those Men’s Health covers. Do you want to know what it takes to look like that? Bodybuilders prepare for MONTHS for contests, with the last six weeks a dieting down to get cut (they live on chicken breasts, egg whites, broccoli and it seems not much else) and the days before the shoot, diuretics. One slice of pizza after the contest, and it’s over. The lesser version, the ripped abs, can often be helped along with meth (the last Gay Pride parade I attended, a buddy of mine could pick out which of the boys displaying a lot of skin