Opinion Piece: Brandy Melville vs. The Wellbeing of Young Women
In recent years, Brandy Melville has swept the globe as one of the leading clothing brands for teen and young adult women. It was launched in 2009, but reached new heights in recent years due to its unconventional marketing strategies (the company owes its monumental success largely to social media). Despite the enormity of its success, Brandy Melville has served as host to recent controversy due to it’s extremely limited sizing chart - most items are sold in one size that doesn’t extend beyond the equivalent of a women’s zero. Obviously, this company is not alone in their hesitancy to cater to bigger sizes; the fashion industry is riddled with size-exclusionism, as well as the thin and white elitism that Brandy Melville’s advertising promotes. However, this kind of exclusionism is far more dangerous than it may first appear - which is why the need for an expanded sizing chart is so immediate.
The most pressing reason for this change is the negative body image and self-esteem that is currently being promoted. I have personally met girls who found themselves in treatment centers and hospitals for eating disorders who say their biggest motivator for turning to unhealthy behaviors was to fit into or try to model Brandy Melville clothing. This isn’t merely correlation, but explicit causation - this company is packaging polyester anorexia and selling it to young girls for 29.99. It is because of this that Brandy’s enormous success is totally baffling. It’s difficult to justify supporting a business that is directly negatively affecting the wellbeing of thousands of young girls across America. Somehow, millions of people do. This is due to the unfortunate truth that most people don’t see size-inclusivity as a human rights issue - which it indisputably is. It is the refusal to market to mass amounts of people purely based on the size and shape of their bodies - which can only really be controlled to an extent. Studies have shown that most people are, more or less, unable to change very much at all about the body they’re born with. And even if someone is able to lose a large amount of weight, they will most likely never be able to fit into Brandy Melville clothing, which offers a waist size of 25 inches (that of the average 8-10 year old girl). So not only is selling only one size of clothing problematic for customers’ self-esteem, it’s just unrealistic.
Obviously, no one is blaming any one company for the international eating disorder epidemic. Indeed, Brandy Melville has only been able to find great success due to harmful societal expectations and stereotypes surrounding beauty that have been in place for centuries. Nevertheless, they benefit from these expectations, and from the body insecurity that has been so deeply ingrained in the female psyche. They profit off of young girls desperately wanting the unattainable image they create and promote.
Brandy Melville markets their clothing as “one size fits most”. Jessy Longo, CEO at the time, was quoted in 2013 saying "We can satisfy almost everybody, but not everybody,” (The Fashion Law, 2020). This is just blatantly incorrect. The average American woman was long thought to be a size fourteen, but recent studies show that that statistic has inflated to between a size sixteen and eighteen. Furthermore, the average American teenage girl (this company’s target demographic) is a size twelve. So in fact, these clothes don’t come close to fitting “most people”. Brandy Melville can’t even appeal to the majority of the people at whom their clothes are aimed - or, would be, if only they would fit. Looking at all of this information, as well as the knowledge that frankly, body positivity could be called the latest trend, it seems abundantly clear that a better business decision would be to adopt a more inclusive mindset, in both stores and ad campaigns.
If the physical and mental health of millions of young people coupled with an opportunity to make more money and help shift the fashion industry isn’t enough, Brandy Melville execs can look to past companies who have been brought down by their refusal to be size-inclusive. Abercrombie and Fitch, for example, has been host to extreme controversy over the years as a result of a size chart that only reached a women’s 10, and their unfortunate tendency to only hire thin, conventionally attractive white people as models as well as store employees (a tendency shared by Brandy Melville, who most often recruit salespeople from their Instagram accounts). To their credit, former CEO Mike Jeffries didn’t even attempt to deny the fact that the company only catered to a statistically miniscule portion of the country, infamously quoted in a 2006 interview with Salon saying “Are we exclusionary? Absolutely” (Glazek, 2013). Large numbers of people were highly offended by A&F’s exclusionary policies, and the remarks made by its CEO. In a 2017 report on the company’s financial standings, Business Insider said “the company's operating income plummeted to $15.2 million in 2016, down from $72.8 million in 2015, and… [closed] dozens of stores” (Taylor, 2017).
For a more recent example of high-profile fashion exclusionism, we can look to the remarks of Victoria’s Secret’s former chief marketing officer Ed Razek, following the 2018 fashion show. Mistreatment of women is nothing new within Victoria’s Secret (Razek and other execs have faced dozens of sexual misconduct allegations from models over the years), but this instance displays a different kind of misogyny. In an interview with Vogue in 2018, Razek made offensive remarks against plus-size and transgender women. His defense of his company’s thin and cis-gender elitism was similar to Brandy Melville’s; “We market to who we sell to, and we don’t market to the whole world” (Phelps, 2018). This sounds much like Jessy Longo’s statement from five years previously, in that they both offer what seems an awful lot like non-apologies from two people too cowardly to come out and say what they really mean: we don’t want fat people wearing our clothes. The company faced intense internet backlash as a result of these comments, and lost the endorsement of many influencers and celebrities. Additionally, VS made the choice to close over fifty stores across the country in the year following Razek’s Vogue interview - not to mention that in 2019, the Victoria’ Secret Fashion Show was cancelled for the first time in its history, over two decades.
On the flipside of this situation, there is Rachel Pally; one of the exceedingly few fashion lines that offers trendy plus-size clothing at a mainstream store. This company was listed as one of Nordstrom’s “top-selling vendors” (Vesilind, 2009) in the late 2000’s, and remains successful today. The reception Rachel Pally has received from customers goes to show that selling plus-size clothing is, if at the least for reasons of supply and demand, very good for business. Mike Jeffries (former CEO of Abercrombie and Fitch) made the argument that having something no other store had (in his case clothes that didn’t fit the average American woman) made that store’s product more desirable. Rachel Pally has flipped this statement on its head as the company racks up millions of dollars over the years. Fashion-forward clothing for bigger bodies is definitely something that virtually no one else is offering.
At the center of all of this is one question - why is this still an issue we’re fighting? The answer is this: Because we still have so much work to do. The fear and hatred of fat still permeates every inch of our society. The oppressive ideals of beauty that have confined us for so long must begin to be deconstructed. In an immediate sense, this means advocating for expanding limited sizing charts and diversifying advertising, especially that aimed at young people. And if some companies keep refusing to do so, we need to be very conscious about what companies we give our money to. This means actively supporting people and businesses who are inclusive and accepting, and actively not supporting those who choose not to be. Young people are the biggest driving force of popular culture and fashion - we have the power to change entire industries. But in order for that advocacy and change to even take place, we need to look for change within ourselves. When it comes to disordered eating and self-consciousness, today's teenagers suffer the most by a statistical landslide. If we want to shift the fashion industry, we have to stop being the perfect customer. We have to stop hating our bodies and wanting something that corporations have told us we are meant to want. Only when we advocate for inclusivity, and advocate for ourselves, can the tower of whiteness and thinness be forcefully dismantled by all of those who aren't allowed in. Only then will companies like Brandy Melville have no one left to sell to.
Works Cited:
Glazek, Christopher. “The Story Behind ‘Fitch the Homeless.’” The New Yorker, Condé Nast, 19 June 2013, www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-story-behind-fitch-the-homeless.
Not Listed. “Brandy Melville: The Controversial Brand That Sells Exactly What Millennials Want.” The Fashion Law, 30 Mar. 2020, www.thefashionlaw.com/brandy-melville-the-controversial-brand-selling-exactly-what-millennials-want/.
Vesilind, Emili. “THE INVISIBLE WOMAN.” Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 1 Mar. 2009, www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2009-mar-01-ig-size1-story.html.
Phelps, Nicole. “‘We're Nobody's Third Love, We're Their First Love’-The Architects of the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show Are Still Banking on Bombshells.” Vogue, Condé Nast, 8 Nov. 2018, www.vogue.com/article/victorias-secret-ed-razek-monica-mitro-interview.
Taylor, Kate. “Abercrombie & Fitch Tried to Remake Its Image - but Its Website Shows Everything That's Still Wrong with the Brand.” Business Insider, Business Insider, 10 May 2017, www.businessinsider.com/abercrombie-and-fitch-website-shows-everything-thats-wrong-with-brand-2017-5.
Horst, Peter. “Victoria's Secret CMO Departs Amid Controversy-Here's What Went Wrong.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 6 Aug. 2019, www.forbes.com/sites/peterhorst/2019/08/06/victorias-secret-cmo-departs-amid-controversy-heres-what-went-wrong/#19cfb7856c22.
