What's Wrong With This Picture?

Back in the days when your faithful correspondent was a wet-behind-the-ears youth there were two stores for men that were considered the plus non ultra for men: Brooks Brothers and Abercrombe and Fitch.

Brooks Brothers specialized in clothing the proper man with tailored suits, overcoats, custom-made shirts and hats, as well as accessories. The style of clothing was conservative, but classic. One could be married in a Brooks Brothers suit and buried fifty years later in the same suit. But since this writer never had the ready cash to give his custom to Brooks Brothers for a suit or shirt, the only Brook Brothers items he own are two bow ties and a pair of suspenders.

And now that this writer is a middle-aged man with expendable income he finds that Brooks Brothers has really become not much more than an Old Navy with virgin wool.

But times changes and one gets accustomed to being called a stick in the mud for wearing a double-breasted pin-strip suit instead of a pair of baggy dungarees and a dirty sweatshirt to church.

Abercrombe and Fitch was, at one time, the complete outfitter. It was a combination of Brooks Brothers and REI co-op and more. If one intended to go on safari in Africa one could be outfitted with clothes, guns, tents, portable kitchens, first-aid kits,maps for the journey. The same held true for treks to Tibet, fishing in New Zealand or dogsledding across Antarctica.

Now A & F has become a rather gay-ish trendy clothing store of metrosexuals and the women who love them. Instead of serving the needs of the explorer or adventurer of the physical world it seems to service the desires of those who are not quite such about the state of their sexuality. The catalogues and ads seem to feature an inordinate number of gay looking men, so one a=can only assume that the company is trying to appeal to the sexually confused. And the company's attention is well known.

So one wonders why this young woman, who claims to be a religious Muslim, would want to work there? Could it be a set-up for a lawsuit to prove the "intolerance" of a company?

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