Lululemon

Thursday

Paul du Quenoy

Confront thieves, get fired: welcome to retail in America’s cities

“Chill, bitch, shut your ass up,” graciously replied a shoplifter to former Lululemon assistant manager Jennifer Ferguson earlier this month, when she told him and two accomplices to stop robbing the suburban Atlanta store where she worked. Ferguson and her colleague Rachel Rogers had good reason to be fed up. The same trio, which was arrested the following day after bystanders reported a separate robbery to the police, had allegedly burgled the same store a dozen times in recent weeks. When Ferguson told them “No, no, no, you can march back out,” the alleged thieves had already raided the store’s shelves yet again and were preparing for a second round, which they then carried out.

lululemon thieves

Thursday

Kara Kennedy

Confessions of a TikTok tradwife

Estee Williams was studying meteorology at college when she dropped out to follow her dream: being a stay-at-home housewife. Now, while spending her days packing her husband’s lunchbox and scrubbing the skirting boards, she films videos for TikTok in flowy dresses where she promotes a return to "traditional" values. Think Betty Draper minus the melancholy. She is the figurehead of the #tradwife movement. If you’re not familiar, the online tradwives are the product of a marriage between Instagram models and Fifties TV moms. They reject however many waves of feminism there are now and long for a return of the traditional nuclear family that once existed in America (for maybe forty years).

tiktok tradwife estee williams skibidi tradwife

Thursday

Teresa Mull

Feeling grateful for coal in West Virginia

Never did I think the day would come when I would be writing about West Virginia coal miners and Lululemon’s “Hotty Hot pants” in the same article. What truly strange times we live in. Last week, I traveled down to wild and wonderful West Virginia for the Bluefield Coal & Mining Show, “A Show for Mining: Past, Present, and Future.” It was a cloudless day in early fall, with crisp air, manly Southern gentlemen with the most charming drawls, huge, impressive, American-made machinery, and free beer everywhere. “Almost heaven” indeed!

Monday

Stephen L. Miller

The gentrification of revolt

Does anyone actually remember George Floyd? What started out as a noble cause to curb police brutality in urban and African American communities has morphed into a corporate crusade of ne'er do wells tossing out woke distractions to keep the Instagram millennial mafia off their backs, as well as the looting for likes and posing for photos on the hoods of police cars, all in the hopes of a viral snap for Instagram, TikTok or Twitter. We’ve seen hordes of entitled white women from Georgetown in Lululemon Yoga gear shrieking at black police officers about their privilege and r/Chapo antifa larpers tearing down statues of Ulysses S. Grant or berating older black people about their history. And let’s not forget that goddamn racist elk statue in Portland.

revolt Friends take a selfie in the the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) in Seattle, Washington

Tuesday

Meghan Murphy

Forget China: people are mad at Lululemon instead

Racism was conquered today in Canada. After Vancouver-based Lululemon art director Trevor Fleming linked to a t-shirt design by California artist Jess Sluder, called ‘bat fried rice’, brave internet warriors took action, accusing the company responsible for turning yoga pants into streetwear of ‘insulting China’. The long-sleeved t-shirt showed an image of a pair of chopsticks with bat wings on the front and a Chinese takeout box with bat wings on the back, with the words, ‘No thank you’. On his website, Sluder was offering the shirt for $60, adding, ‘Where did COVID-19 come from? Nothing is certain, but we know a bat was involved. This quarantine offers a friendly reminder to avoid foods containing this nocturnal beast.

wuhan lululemon