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   There it is, in a nutshell, the reason why the A&F Quarterly and its inherent contents are so bothersome to parents in America. It is one more piece of evidence that demonstrates their fear that, as parents, they are having less and less influence on the actions of their children. Of course, that is not necessarily true. But being a parent nowadays means that you are competing with so many other aspects of daily life, you are never too sure if you are winning or losing the battle.
   Mr Della Femina’s first thoughts as a parent are to question the “lost” innocence of pre-teen and teenagers today: ‘Wait a minute. Stop. You’re too young to see and know [these things].’ However, he soon realizes that ‘short of locking kids in their rooms 24 hours a day, there is no way you can stop them from living in these, their years.’
   Just when it think it is safe to go back into the water (cue in the theme music from Jaws), another hysterical and ultimately groundless “controversy” flared up over the Back-to-School 2001 issue of the Quarterly. Illinois Lt Gov Corinne Woods (Republican) held a news conference in early June, where she and a motley crew of supporters announced a boycott campaign against the company, charging that its racy images ‘are luring teenagers into a lives of sex and sin, homosexuality and Aids, rape and disgrace.’ What planet is she living on?
   The most astonishing aspect of this latest attempt to censure the public’s right to indiscriminately spend its disposable income rashly is the spectre of naturally born enemies uneasily co-existing under this boycott banner. There, surrounding the visibly indignant Lieutenant-Governor were representatives from the Islamic Cultural Center, Citizens for Community Values, the Chicago Rabbinical Council, the Illinois Coalition Against Domestic Violence, the Hospital Crisis Intervention project of Chicago Abused Women Coalition, and the Chicago, and Illinois, chapters of the National Organization for Women. In saner times, the NOW members would be protesting the actions of the über-conservative religious groups. They have now declared their allies against A&F ‘for promoting unrealistic body types and photos that suggested group sex.’

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Above: The National Organization for Women says that A&F has promoted ‘unrealistic body types and photos that suggested group sex’—or is this, as the author says, ‘hysterical and ultimately groundless’? From the summer 2000 issue. Below left: Christmas 2000, a tamer image that might exemplify the furore. Below right: Summer 1999—but why must photographs of half-naked (or totally naked) men lure teens into homosexuality as has been charged—and the same images of women do not?

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