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a few more comments:
there are other stores besides thrift stores that one can buy unbranded merchandise: sweatX is the first one that comes to mind. another store like that should come up in google.
in uptown areas, thrift stores carry better (more expensive) merchandise than A&F. I live in OC. If you go anywhere around the posh regions of OC or LA, you're going to find unbelievable things. That was just a suggestion as an antidote to consumerism--I wasn't trying to convince you, powerclown of anything, just answering your Q about where one could possibly go these days.
Now I don't usually buy _really_ expensive stuff, but when i have bought designer dresses and things, they are never branded. Neither are the most expensive suits and even my tux. So if one were really concerned about labels and things, expensive clothes are on the other end of the spectrum. My understanding is that slogans on clothes was a middle class phenom. The ball cap was the most blatant form of this. lower classes don't care, I suppose, and upper crust doens't want someone else's name on their ass. The only people who seem to care are people desperately trying to announce their class position and their desire to be upwardly mobile.
11-15 year olds know a hell of a lot more about sex than many of you are giving them credit for. They prolly get more sex than most of us, actually. and it isn't a new thing, although people try and link it to the decadence of our modern culture.
The notion that A&F is marketed toward these (pre)teens was not caused by A&F. It was caused by articles that started this thread. A&F claims they market their clothes to college students, their catalog was age restricted, and the models don't look like prepubescents or even high schoolers. The fact that parents buy their children these clothes doesn't make A&F culpable. It also doesn't say anything about the parenting styles, either. It's just clothes.
I think it's tragic for people to be linking one's clothing choices to that person's sexuality. If someone buys clothes from a catalog that shows people engaging in orgies and etc., that does _not_ make the purchaser into a whore. Wearing short skirts, baring midruffs, and low cut tops do _not_ translate into being a whore or sexually loose. The only thing that makes someone sexually promiscuous is engaging in sexual behavior--and girls and boys who don't ever show an inch of flesh are just as capable as those who show it all at engaging in sexual behavior.
Sexual behavior doesn't impugn anyone's moral character, unless they purport to subscribe to a particular set of moral beliefs that would otherwise argue that they shouldn't be doing it. If a girl or boy is a member of a church that believes premarital sex is wrong, then I would support someone calling his or her morals into question because he or she wouldn't be adhering to a chosen belief system.
That's where I draw my lines.
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"The theory of a free press is that truth will emerge from free discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account." -- Walter Lippmann
"You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." -- Abbie Hoffman
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