Ben Miller 11/3/26 Ben Miller 11/3/26

Mike Jeffries (The Abercrombie CEO)

We start our brand-new season with the story of Mike Jeffries, the Abercrombie & Fitch CEO who turned a bankrupt old-school outdoors brand into a late-90s/early-00s temple of exclusionary “cool."

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We start our brand-new season with the story of Mike Jeffries, the Abercrombie & Fitch CEO who turned a bankrupt old-school outdoors brand into a late-90s/early-00s temple of exclusionary “cool." Surely you remember the ads, or maybe you remember the stores: the pumping music, the blasts of cologne that made your throat close up, the shutters across the front of the store, as if this little corner of a suburban shopping mall was actually an exclusive nightclub. Or maybe you remember the Bruce Weber-shot soft-porn catalogue, which once featured an essay by (yes! no!) Slavoj Zizek. Clothes for homophobic bullies were made in marketed from a self-hating gay sensibility: and the story of Mike Jeffries might be the single solitary key to understanding how the aesthetics of the closet became mainstream marketing, how a gay aesthetic was used to sell homophobic masculinity and how that tension crushed employees and turned its visionary into a monster now credibly accused of sexual assault and harassment.

For more on Mike Jeffries, read the sources we used to research this episode:

Netflix: White Hot - The Rise and Fall of Abercrombie and Fitch

BBC: World of Secrets - The Abercrombie Guys

https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/an-oral-history-of-abercrombie-and-fitch

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-story-behind-fitch-the-homeless

https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2012/oct/18/abercrombie-fitch-boss-extraordinary-male-model-demands

https://wwd.com/fashion-news/fashion-scoops/feature/fashion-photographer-bruce-weber-and-male-models-end-legal-battles-1234907151/

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce8vmy56yero

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/abercrombie-fitch-ceo-corporate-jet-rulebook_n_1980960

https://www.salon.com/2006/01/24/jeffries/

https://www.advocate.com/crime/abercrombie-fitch-mike-jeffries-dementia

https://www.theguardian.com/global/2024/sep/14/i-constantly-was-saying-no-ex-abercrombie-fitch-boss-accused-of-abuse-at-global-sex-events

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/10/22/former-abercrombie-ceo-mike-jeffries-arrested-in-sex-trafficking-case.html\

https://www.businessinsider.com/michael-jeffries-partner-is-too-involved-2013-5

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/02/former-abercrombie-fitch-ceo-accused-of-exploiting-young-men-for-sex

https://www.dazeddigital.com/fashion/article/55905/1/abercrombie-fitch-netflix-documentary-sexual-exploitation-racism-bruce-weber

https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/former-ceo-abercrombie-fitch-and-two-other-individuals-charged-sex-trafficking-and

https://archive.ph/JUDyD

https://www.thecut.com/2014/02/why-abercrombie-is-losing-its-shirt.html#

https://monoskop.org/images/d/db/A_and_F_Quarterly_Back_to_School_2003_The_Sex_Ed_Issue.pdf

https://www.complex.com/style/a/emilyl/revisiting-absurd-critical-theory-abercrombies-2003-back-school-catalog

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/apr/19/abercrombie-fitch-netflix-documentary-fashion-discrimination

https://archive.ph/HdrvF

https://archive.ph/W0YZo

https://archive.ph/pAoOR

https://www.classaction.org/media/abercrombie-indictment.pdf

https://www.theguardian.com/business/interactive/2012/oct/19/abercrombie-fitch-aircraft-standards-manual?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB876176611622798500

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/13/style/mario-testino-bruce-weber-harassment.html

https://web.archive.org/web/20170614225056/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2015-01-22/the-aging-of-abercrombie-fitch-i58ltcqx

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.Michael Oswell is the voice of Slavoj Zizek.

Ben Miller 6/27/26 Ben Miller 6/27/26

Special Episode: Liza’s Bad Gays

The one and only Liza through the stories of the bad gays who shaped her life.

Happy pride! Gather around, we've got a story to tell! For Stonewall weekend, a special treat: writer, critic, and journalist Cameron Cook joins Ben to talk about the one and only Liza through the stories of the bad (and good) gays in her life, from her father Vincente Minnelli to her first husband Peter Allen to her diabolical fourth husband David Gest. Liza learned on her (and our) mother Judy Garland's knee how to survive by appealing to gay guys. Gay guys used Judy, then Liza to self-fashion. None of it is particularly healthy, and yet we love it so.

**Support our work by subscribing to Extra Bad Gays on Patreon or Apple, and get an extra monthly episode!**

Our main source for this episode was Liza's new memoir, Kids, Wait Til You Hear This!, and Cameron's newsletter Cooked, with monthly essays and regular music playlists for pop culture obsessives, can be found here.

Ben Miller 4/29/26 Ben Miller 4/29/26

Mandelson: A Homosexual History

Peter Mandelson's decades-long political career is a skeleton key to everything that's gone wrong in Western politics in the last forty years. Our five-part miniseries breaks it down.