Wilson begins her story by asking why Penney's, which she refers to as both a "perennially square department store" and a "dowdy Middle American entity" would "waddle into Midtown in its big old shorts and flip-flops without even bothering to update its ancient logo?" How DARE you J.C. Penney! You came to New York and didn't even DRESS UP FOR US??! J.C. Penney, you are a frowzy monster!
Despite Wilson's incredulity over its existence, she manages to make it to the store. Once there, she uses her time to poke fun at the excited young girls and their mothers who are back-to-school shopping and squealing over what Wilson deems only "lukewarm" clothes. Next the writer insults a cheerful J.C. Penney salesclerk who admits to "genuinely liking" her job. The nerve.
While she seems to despise joy or earnestness in any form, Ms. Wilson's true wrath is reserved for J.C. Penney's curvier clientele. To wit: "It took me a long time to find a size 2 among the racks. There are, however, abundant size 10’s, 12’s and 16’s," she says. "[The store] has the most obese mannequins I have ever seen. They probably need special insulin-based epoxy injections just to make their limbs stay on. It’s like a headless wax museum devoted entirely to the cast of 'Roseanne.'"
Take that, fat people!
But Ms. Wilson doesn't stop there. Turns out, she has a problem with even the most innocuous, good-intentioned products in the store:
"The few clothing items that are made of cotton make a sincere point of being cotton and tell you earnestly about their 100-percent cottonness with faux-hand-scribbled labels so obviously on the Green bandwagon they practically spit pine cones."
Come on! Seriously? Is this woman so angry/out of touch/desperate to reach her word count that she needs to spew bile at COTTON? That's just sad.
And, really, the whole story is sad and pointless. I hate this kind of elitism in fashion writing. It's not funny, it's cruel. It's not cool, it's bad manners. It makes people feel bad about themselves--why would you want to put that into the world? According to the American Obesity Association, 127 million adults in the U.S. are overweight, which is 64.5 percent of the population. By pointing out an abundance of larger sizes and disparaging mannequins that realistically depict the figures of millions of women, Ms. Wilson is demeaning the majority of American females. It's high school all over again. And just like any Mean Girls situation, this story reflects poorly on the person who's doing the teasing and bullying, not on the rest of us.
Playing to the Middle
