LONDON (Reuters) - UK advertising regulators signaled a weariness of the double
entendre used by French Connection to sell its FCUK brand and warned the
clothing chain again, this time over a promotion for its line of fragrances.
In an ad placed for French Connection by Zirh International in the Boots
pharmacy chain's magazine, a picture of a young couple sitting on a bed in their
underwear included fold-out samples of perfume with the phrases "open here to
try fcuk her" and "open here to try fcuk him."
The FCUK logo has courted controversy since its launch in 1997. Fashion mavens say the rebellious hip factor that helped catapult the brand to success has long since worn off.
I guess I'm so far from hip that I've never even seen this stuff before. In the deepest recesses of my mind, I am hinting at remembering a blurry reference to it. Nothing further. If the fashion mavens are right, I guess I'm too late to worry about it. (Excuse the lapse; J was born in 1997 and the next 2-3 years are a maternal haze.)
I can understand the Brit regulatory objections in magazines, but the the funny thing to me about the overall concern, and applying that to us Yanks, is that most Americans who want to have FUCK on their shirt will wear FUCK on their shirt. FCUK is kind of wimpy in comparison.
Also, keeping in mind that I'm a mother, I believe that most teenagers who have parents who would object to a FUCK shirt (or perfume or whatever) also have parents who would object to FCUK, too. And vice versa, doesn't care, wouldn't care.
3 comments:
I don't know what fuck-fcuk H.I.M. is, but I wish I'd never heard of it. I caught a glimpse of what looked like it would turn out to be a God site and tried to back out of it, but it just froze up and wouldn't turn loose of me! Shit! Fuck! Rotten motherfucker! I don't know, maybe it's really my computer that freezes up like that on its own, but my observation has been that the sites that freeze up my computer are always things with Black backgrounds, an excessive degree of hipness, sites that I judged to be likely showoffs to begin with. Perhaps it's a self-fulfilling mistrust and nervousness that I display. But I'm sorry you mentioned it because I had to reboot!
Sign me,
stupid-guy button-pusher.
O, the FCUKing tee-shirts drove me crazy a few years ago when I was on vacation in London. Little girls--nine?, eleven?--were wearing them sooo proudly. Bleck.
That H.I.M. site didn't freeze my PC, but it's pretty funny. And what's with that look? They look like thirty-year-old versions of my fellow goth-teen friends from 1984. Where's the originality these days? We thought we looked cool as deathrockers, but we had the excuse of being in ninth grade.
--Bugs
Ron, sorry about your 'puter. It didn't happen to mine when I looked up the site - I didn't explore the site deeply, tho. Did you go past the intro page? I couldn't bear to.
Oro, yes, H.I.M. clothes abound at P's house and in their town. L has a jacket, hat, and a number of shirts. L saw the group over the summer and I think one shirt came from there. The rest came from the Hot Topic store, www.Hottopic.com - but I seriously doubt it is as big a fashion phenom as FCUK.
Bugs, until I met L, I thought the goth crap was a thing of the past. We live in a large metropolitan area and P lives in a small town on the edge of it. I live 30 minutes away on another edge. Where I live, I would guess that less than 10% of the teenagers in the malls wear black, chains, and Tripp pants. Where P lives, I'm sure it is over 50%. Funny, their nearest Hot Topic is at least 30 minutes away, so it takes effort to look like this.
Oro, although all the garb isn't H.I.M. exactly, I believe it is all related in psyche and appearance.
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