  Scoliosis Chic urlLink Freddie Prinze, Jr . has the worst posture. I mention this because I noticed today on my lunchtime walk around the mall that it appears that GAP and Snobercrombie and Flinch have discovered a way of dressing their window mannequins so that the headless dummies appear to be slouching like said Spouse-of-Buffy. Which leads me to wonder if in fact the outfits being marketed in this way were actually designed to be worn while slouching.
There certainly isn't much to most of them unless they are artistically crumpled and pulled askew by jutting hips and hunched down rib cages and off-kilter shoulders. Has anybody thought to study this? Probably not. Being your friendly mall anthropologist I call it to your attention. If I had funding, I could conduct a study, coming back in 15 years and measuring bone mass loss and lower back pain amongst current A&F shoppers (ie ninth graders).
I would also study what, for lack of a better term, I would have to call "gumption. " urlLink Orlando Bloom , roughly a contemporary, does not slouch. Does he generally appear therefore that he could at any time kick Freddie's ass? You betcha. James Bond does not slouch. The Karate Kid does not slouch. Neo, Batman, Superman, slouchers none. Perhaps I'm moderately more sensitive than most, having suffered all sorts of spinal issues throughout my otherwise uneventful childhood and so in store windows I still have the habit of checking my reflection to see if I'm standing up straight enough.
So I have it on the brain as I'm gazing at the displays anyway. The GAP mannequins are not nearly as bad as A&F. The spring line is better than winter, perhaps the warm weather and ice cream colors have perked them up. But A&F is bad. Those mannequins are hopeless, if they came to life they would spend their days hanging around the mall, bumming cigarettes from Gadget Porn store employees and staring vacantly at the windows of stores.
The JCrew mannequins have nice straight spinal cords. They are upwardly mobile and should they come to life, in short order I'm sure they'd be captains of industry and rulers of the free world. Or at least winners of "The Apprentice. " And now the socioeconomic element (and you thought I was just BS-ing this? I have a degree , I'll remind you). JCrew is the most expensive of the three stores, growing more so, in fact. Come to think of it, Banana Republic (GAP's higher rent cousin) also has very straight-backed mannequins.
Not that GAP and A&F are cheap, they're just expensive enough to convince ninth graders that they're getting something really cool. But JCrew and BR are much more expensive (completely out of my price range, for instance). And their mannequins do not slouch. Connections? Coincidence? Comments? And yes, I know that I spend too much damn time at the mall and that I probably put too much thought into the small things, left with nothing else to occupy my mind for 8 hours.
You can leave that little remark at home tied up in the yard. I hope that I have now sparked something for you to think about. Now that I've mentioned it, you're going to see them everywhere, slouchy mannequins and famous people. It's like pregnant women or albinos. 
