I’m not usually one for the whole flashmob thing, where a bunch of people who don’t really know each other get together and engage in some random act of humorousness, but this flashmob/prank/stunt thing that a NYC improv group pulled off is rather funny, and also actually has a kind of critical point to it.
For our latest mission, 111 men of all shapes and sizes shopped shirtless in the Abercrombie and Fitch store on 5th Avenue here in New York. Enjoy the videos first and then go behind the scenes with our mission report and photos.
… Agent Nguyen came up with the idea for this mission when he noticed the 5th Avenue Abercrombie and Fitch store had a shirtless male model greeting all customers as they enter. Upon further examination, we discovered the model is only one aspect of the store’s celebration of the shirtless male. There are photographs all over the store of bare-chested men, both on the wall and on the products themselves.
I hope to write an article someday on how it is that Abercrombie & Fitch discovered that they could sell overpriced clothes to presumably homophobic frat boys through the artful deployment of images of glistening male models in various states of disrobement, but for now I’ll just say that it is one of the great counterintuitive jujitsu ad maneuvers of all time.
It’s not that we didn’t know that there’s a strong element of homoeroticism embedded in the DNA of frat boy culture, it’s just that we figured that the last thing that the frat boys wanted was to be reminded of that.
Also, while we’re on the subject, this video, "Brohemian Rhapsody," is pretty funny. I particularly like the names they found for their archetypal frat boys (Duncan, Hunter, Logan, etc.).
