The “Girlcott” was an accident - a very good accident. It originated when twenty-four amazing girls found out about a line of t-shirts with a bad attitude toward young women and, with the support of some great adults, decided to do something about it.
We are the Allegheny County Girls as Grantmakers, a program of the Women and Girls Foundation (WGF), made up of a diverse group of girls from different schools, neighborhoods, races, sexual orientations, all with different interests and personalities. The only two things we have in common are that we want to help make positive change for women and girls, and we have an amazing friendship.
Our group got started when the WGF staff and board of directors decided to start a girls grantmaking program to increase teen involvement in the Foundation and to give teens the chance to make social change happen in their communities. WGF developed funding and a team of adult mentors from several area foundations including; The FISA Foundation, Eden Hall Foundation, the Multi-Cultural Arts Initiative, the Forbes Funds, and the Jewish Women’s Foundation to work on the project. In the end, 24 girls were selected to become the first class of Girls as Grantmakers and we were given $10,000 to give away to other girls to lead projects in our community focused on breaking down stereotypes, and promoting girls in politics, sports, math, and science in Allegheny County.
At our first retreat in late August 2005, where we really got to meet and get to know each other, the idea for the Girlcott formed. We were participating in a mock-grantmaking program, and one of the mock programs we had the option to fund was a rally to take place outside a local mall – protesting degrading t-shirts being sold at Abercrombie & Fitch. These t-shirts displayed extremely sexist and degrading messages such as “You Better Make More Than I Can Spend”, “Last Night I Had A Nightmare I Was A Brunette”, “Do I Make You Look Fat?”, “Anatomy Tutor”, and many more, including the one that got us most enraged, “Who Needs Brains When You Have These?” written across the chest. Immediately all of the girls were shocked and slightly nauseated that any company would even think of marketing these t-shirts to us and other young women. As Jettie, co-chair of Girls as Grantmakers said, “We would not want anyone exploiting us, so why are we exploiting ourselves?” We didn’t care that this was simply supposed to be a mock grantmaking project anymore. Heather Arnet, Executive Director of the Women and Girls Foundation, saw the level of excitement we had about it and agreed to support us in our efforts. She pledged the Foundations staff, marketing, pr, and financial investment in our protest if we did the work……now we were ready to dive in head-first and take on these t-shirts right away!
At first we wanted to picket the stores inside different malls, but we realized that we could not get permits because malls are private property. So we decided to have a press conference at a local college instead. About eight representatives of the local press came to cover it. We were so excited that anyone showed up at all! About ten of us spoke, and each explained why she found the t-shirts offensive, encouraged other girls to email Abercrombie with their complaints, asked that other girls distribute an email we wrote about the t-shirts to their friends, and ultimately stop buying from Abercrombie and Fitch, or, in better terms, “Girlcott” the company.
We were all so happy that night when they covered our story on a few local news channels, and in one of the local papers. And if that made us happy, imagine how ecstatic we felt when WGF got a call from NBC asking for the two co-chairs, Jettie and Emma, and Heather to fly to New York City and chat with Katie Couric on The Today Show the day after the press conference. That was when the Girlcott really picked up…
In total, our story was in 21 cable news segments, 312 local TV news markets, 6 national and international radio spots, 67 regional newspapers, 4 national newspapers, 8 international newspapers, and 23,000 stories on the web. We also got hundreds of emails in support of our campaign.
Just five days after our debut on The Today Show, Abercrombie released a statement that said they would agree to meet with us, and pull two of the shirts, “Who Needs Brains When You Have These”, and “Gentlemen Prefer Tig Ole Bitties”. We were so excited to hear this news! We had a quick celebration, and then got to work right away on deciding what to say to the Abercrombie officials.
We decided on first telling them why we did not like the t-shirts, then saying what we wanted them to change, and then finally giving them suggestions on slogans for a new and empowering line of t-shirts. We all got the feeling that we took them by surprise on how prepared we were. We entered the meeting in professional business attire and had a well put together PowerPoint presentation. Even though they didn’t seem too quick to use any of our suggestions, we definitely felt like we had a major impact on this corporate giant.
First off, we were all so glad to get Abercrombie to meet with us at all – we felt like we had achieved a huge victory already. Some of our favorite parts in the meeting were when Maya questioned the only man of color in the room, the head of diversity, about their diversity practices. Another part was when Zoe directly asked the two women in the room, who hadn’t spoken the whole meeting, what they felt about the t-shirts. After one replied “I agree with Tom [Lennox, head of corporate communications]” Zoe then said, “No, I want to know what you think”.
Even though Abercrombie and Fitch did not take our ideas for a new t-shirt line, we didn’t just give up and stop there. We took the slogans we came up with and created our own line of empowering t-shirts with slogans such as:
- Caution! Beauty and Brains Coming Your Way!,
- Your Future Boss,
- In My Lifetime, There Will Be a Woman President
- All this and Brains to Match
The Abercrombie and Fitch “attitude tee” line simply started out with some racy t-shirts with bad messages, but with the addition of a group of twenty-four determined girls, the leadership and support of the courageous Women and Girls Foundation staff and board of directors, lots of media coverage and support from people all over the world, these t-shirts and girls created an international sensation now known as “The Girlcott.” We hope that now that you know the story of the Girlcott you will become interested in helping us and WGF seed other forms of social change – and more importantly think about seeding your own social change movement wherever you live. Because when women and girls combine their ideas, voices, and dollars – they can truly change the world!
