Regarding the fact that the Gap sells super-skinny jeans for pre-teens: I believe they started selling these things a few months ago, but I’ve only recently seen this promotional picture of a nine year old girl wearing the skinny jeans and holding a Diana Camera (with a flash kit no less!) in a huge window display on Robson Street. Can we deconstruct this ad for a second? Or at least can we acknowledge how ridiculous it is to accessorize a 9 year old child with a film-based, toy camera from the 1960’s.  Are they seriously trying to have us believe that this 4th grader prefers the soft, dream like aesthetic of medium format film and the process of manual photography?! FUCK YOU, ADVERTISING AGENCY RETAINED BY THE GAP, INC.  Why not have the kid stand next to a 1st generation IBM supercomputer, which is an equally irrelevant piece of technology that the child has no sense of reference or attachment to!? Look, I realize advertising is all about selling an ideal persona.  I also realize that parents treat their young children as dress up dolls and in turn, there’s appeal in dressing one up like a hipster (or whatever you call it)… maybe because the parent feels they can no longer dress like one them self?  Whatever. Either way, if you enjoy taking vintage photography and the look of fitted denim, your aesthetic judgment has been co-opted by people who have spent less time on earth than the iPod. Yay?

Regarding the fact that the Gap sells super-skinny jeans for pre-teens:

I believe they started selling these things a few months ago, but I’ve only recently seen this promotional picture of a nine year old girl wearing the skinny jeans and holding a Diana Camera (with a flash kit no less!) in a huge window display on Robson Street.

Can we deconstruct this ad for a second? Or at least can we acknowledge how ridiculous it is to accessorize a 9 year old child with a film-based, toy camera from the 1960’s.  Are they seriously trying to have us believe that this 4th grader prefers the soft, dream like aesthetic of medium format film and the process of manual photography?! FUCK YOU, ADVERTISING AGENCY RETAINED BY THE GAP, INC.  Why not have the kid stand next to a 1st generation IBM supercomputer, which is an equally irrelevant piece of technology that the child has no sense of reference or attachment to!?

Look, I realize advertising is all about selling an ideal persona.  I also realize that parents treat their young children as dress up dolls and in turn, there’s appeal in dressing one up like a hipster (or whatever you call it)… maybe because the parent feels they can no longer dress like one them self?  Whatever.

Either way, if you enjoy taking vintage photography and the look of fitted denim, your aesthetic judgment has been co-opted by people who have spent less time on earth than the iPod. Yay?

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  1. anewbody reblogged this from vanmega
  2. criticalculture reblogged this from lukesimcoe
  3. lukesimcoe reblogged this from heeeraldo
  4. anjalouise said: I had a really weird experience noticing this sign out of the corner of my eye while standing in a boring line, and it took me a LOT of looks before I realized it was a children’s Gap store!!
  5. heeeraldo reblogged this from vanmega and added:
    preteens (full post here)
  6. vanmega posted this