Lands’ End, respected purveyor of serviceable clothing, put out a fancy catalog. It contained an interview at which some people directed a fury campaign. The company apologized. The apology infuriated different people, generating another fury campaign. The subject of the interview had just uttered her own infuriating apology on an entirely different subject.
Gloria Vanderbilt was the subject of the biography Little Gloria… Happy at Last. I know of no connection between the Glorias Vanderbilt and Steinem, but I was hoping this would get the bio title unstuck from my head.
1958 photograph by Carl van Vechten.
It’s Gloria Steinem, concept and person, whirling around in apology world. The Lands’ End interview was done by new CEO Federica Marchionni, hired to bring the edgy. It’s not a mere burbly grip-and-grin, but it’s not wildly controversial stuff. Steinem speaks well of an Equal Rights Amendment, and what a nice idea it would be to ratify it. Marchionni says Lands’ End will donate $3 to the Fund for Women’s Equality if customers so designate on their purchases. Which certainly inclines me to buy quilted vests, cotton turtlenecks, and maybe a swimsuit.
But because Gloria Steinem also supports women’s right to abortion, pro-life activists decided to attack Lands’ End. They got a Catholic high school in Missouri that orders uniforms to say they would no longer order from Lands’ End. They stirred up outrage on Facebook.
Tragically horrified – Lands’ End sells a lot of uniforms – the company took the interview down from their website and issued the following craven apology:
We understand that some of our customers were offended by the inclusion of an interview in a recent catalog with Gloria Steinem on her quest for women’s equality. We thought it was a good idea and we heard from our customers that, for different reasons, it wasn’t. For that, we sincerely apologize. Our goal was to feature individuals with different interests and backgrounds that have made a difference for our new Legends Series, not to take any political or religious stance.
They name the offense (featuring Steinem), but don’t say why “it wasn’t”… “a good idea.” What does “for different reasons” mean, exactly? So it’s not clear what they’re apologizing for. For not thinking Steinem is Bad? Or for not realizing that some people think Steinem is Bad? They do not mention that they’ve also withdrawn the option to request donation to the Fund for Women’s Equality. (So not just about abortion rights?)
They’re trying to walk a line here, falling over themselves to backtrack without actually saying ‘sorry for showcasing the antichrist.’ Edgy new plan: offend nobody! (What Legends will they interview now? They can’t do Jane Goodall in every issue.) A sad boring plan, worthy of the most cringing bureaucracy.
News of this terrified withdrawal hit news and social media (even still more Facebook, for example) and produced lots of outraged letters like this one Snarly wrote:
Sorry to have to say goodbye. When you cower before the anti-feminist right, you have to answer to the feminist left. And purely from a business perspective, you mishandled this incident so wildly. You could have just infuriated one constituency (I didn’t hear about the right-wing anger until you responded to it) but instead you managed to distress TWO separate and opposing groups. This is like a business-school case study in how NOT to handle a crisis.
Shame to bid you farewell — ALL of my children’s winter boots, and many of their coats, dresses, shoes and bathing suits, have come from Lands End over the years. But you’ve made your alliances and choices.
To which letters Land’s End responded with this, from a Customer Services VP:
Thank you for sharing your honest feedback with us. It was never our intention to raise a divisive political or religious issue. We take the comments of all our customers very seriously, and I am continuing to share customer feedback with our Executive Team.
We sincerely apologize for any offense. It is my hope that we will be able to earn back your loyalty again in the future.
Not good. Humble but still evasive. Apologizing “for any offense” is just a form of Sorry-If. I believe that they never intended to raise any divisive issue (way too edgy). Perhaps they deliberately avoided mentioning abortion. But there are lots of people looking for things to be divided by.
Gloria Steinem in 1972, possibly detecting a boy.
Maybe infuriated customer group number 2 is larger than infuriated customer group number 1 – or not. I agree with Snarly – they bungled.
As for Steinem’s own apology saga, it came from remarks she made in an interview with Bill Maher. She was talking about people’s voting patterns changing over their lifetimes. “Men tend to get more conservative because they gain power as they age, and women tend to get more radical because they lose power as they age,” she said.
Her generalizations about age in are interesting, but only generalizations. I know many exceptions, and you probably do too.
She went on: “It’s not fair to measure most women by the standard of most men, because they’re gonna get more activist as they grow older, and when you’re young, you’re thinking, ‘Where are the boys? The boys are with Bernie.’”
Notice how she moved from carefully generalizing – “tend to,” “most women” – to being all too specific about what young women think.
That’s insulting to young women who support Bernie Sanders. Many commenters have interpreted it as meaning young female Sanders supporters want to meet boys. But it’s also insulting if it means young female Sanders supporters are impressed by the opinions of boys because they’re boys. Or because, as Jill Filipovic points out, the common perception is that ‘guy stuff is cool.’
Here’s a thing. There probably are some young women who support Sanders for one of those reasons. (There are probably young men who support Hillary Clinton to meet girls. Etc.) Most, however, support Sanders because they like his political record and what he says. That’s why my husband supports Sanders. I wouldn’t like his reasoning to be ignored because of his age and gender.
Lots of people demanded an apology. This is what they got:
I misspoke on the Bill Maher show recently, and apologize for what’s been misinterpreted as implying young women aren’t serious in their politics. What I had just said on the same show was the opposite: young women are active, mad as hell about what’s happening to them, graduating in debt, but averaging a million dollars less over their lifetimes to pay it back. Whether they gravitate to Bernie or Hillary, young women are activist and feminist in greater numbers than ever before.
Terrible!
Gloria! You’ve been a journalist, and yet you use the word “misspoke”? You were “misinterpreted”?
It’s true you say young women are active/feminist/mad as hell/must be taken seriously. But you also said that other thing, and a proper apology needs to address that.
Why did Steinem say that “Where are the boys?” thing. I wonder if there have been times in Steinem’s life when she herself cared a lot about where the boys were.
Oh noes.
I believe the problem with both apologies is that they are disingenuous. I spoke with the Land’s End executive, who I requested return my call after pulling up my account history. She apologized profusely for “what this meant”, i.e. losing my business. The only thing Land’s End is sorry about is losing money, and they didn’t come out and apologize for that. They apologized for “offending customers”, which carries with it a moral weight. If you read the interview that was cut it didn’t even mention abortion, and Gloria’s work as an activist has been about improving lives for women on ALL levels–and throughout the world.
Gloria’s apology was also disingenuous because it wasn’t one she needed to make, in my opinion. I believe she meant what she said and Pew data backs it up. Young people are proving they are not serious about Bernie Sanders; they aren’t coming out to vote. Turnout is well below 2008 levels, especially with young voters. And young women are cautious about using the word “feminism” to describe themselves, and while the majority of Americans support legal abortion, they are quick to add “in certain circumstances”. While those circumstances are undoubtedly varied, the fact that a disclaimer is necessary at all demonstrates a change in attitudes. Perhaps Gloria should have arrived with more of these facts at hand. But the interview itself was off-the-cuff. Maher was flirting with her and admiring her appearance and outfit and introduced the topic of Sanders by “wondering” if young women were just rejecting their mothers by not supporting Hillary. Gloria was on the show to promote her book, and I don’t recall that the book was mentioned. To my ear, Gloria was pointing out that young people (away from home for the first time, either at college or in the workplace) tend to influence each other, shape and adopt beliefs and values that are possibly for the first time different from their parents. Maybe I am hearing what I want to hear, but that’s not an outrageous statement to make (let alone offensive). Moreover, so far it’s true, and if young women are offended by the statement that they are not serious about supporting Sanders they ought to prove the statement wrong by actually voting.
I don’t think of Gloria as a journalist. I know she was one, but she has been an activist for a very long time. Activists have agendas and are generally open about them. I don’t believe Gloria should have apologized at all, because while what she said was a generalization it’s one that’s backed up by numbers and data.
Both apologizes were lame. Both were disingenuous.
Wow.
Indeed, hadn’t heard about this until now, so the “sorry for offending” thing is especially troublesome and the apology, hackneyed. It does interest me how people can fail to be specific.
And as for Ms. Steinam herself – I did wonder what was up with that throwaway comment which essentially was “you young girls are just following the boys, none of you are serious about politics.” In which case, what? and where did you get that? It’s too bad she didn’t break that down.
I think it’s a mistake to omit the little qualifiers — “many,” “most,” “some,” or “tend to be” — in statements about groups of people. Better than “Men are taller than women” is “Most men are taller than most women.” Why ask Danny DeVito to get things off the high shelf, when Uma Thurman is standing right there, tapping her foot?
Some young women don’t identify as feminists, and some young women do. Some young people aren’t turning out to vote, and some young people are. Some young people care “where the boys are” and some young people don’t. I think the “some” allows people not to feel wrongly targeted.
Of course, what makes these statements actually useful are NUMBERS.