One day, in the fall of 1995, I decided it was time to do something about Urban Outfitters. I was sick of hearing my friends complain about getting paid slave wages in exchange for discounts on crappy clothes and the privilege of listening to indie rock at top volume all day. I was especially disgusted by their stories of girls trying on baby-doll dresses and begging their boyfriends to tell them they didn't look like chubsters; or about the occasional overweight girl brave enough to pick through the techno-enhanced labyrinth of skinny-girl clothes, in order to squeeze into something that made her look like an overgrown baby. Worst of all, I was horrified by the fact that so many people my age were buying into U.O.'s brand of mass-produced pseudo-nostalgia: After all, why scour through dirty Salvation Army bins for bellbottoms, barrettes, and lava lamps when you can pick up the same stuff sanitized and neatly presented on racks at a location convenient to your dorm? So I designed a hate poster, printed up a few thousand of them, and proceeded to plaster them on the windows and walls of Urban Outfitters everywhere.

My [then-]boyfriend was touring with his band and I went along for the ride. I hit stores in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, Austin, and Seattle. In Boston and New York the morning after the posters went up, I stood outside of the store in costume (a polka-dotted suit and a very long red wig) as my alter-ego Miss Kitty Bates, handing out little postcards I'd made. The postcards depicted a slouching waif with a question mark bubble for a head, and read: "EXHIBIT A: HUNGRY WAIF," with my name and P.O. Box at the bottom. People would crowd around, hoping for free passes to a club or fab party or something, and continue on into the store. Often they'd read the card before they got through the door and look back at me with hurt, but also with curiosity, in their eyes.

When I included my address on the posters and cards I wasn't expecting a lot of feedback, because like a lot of people, I had grown cynical about people's lack of interest in anything with artistic or social content. I was really touched, then, by the number of responses I received from strangers who had just seen my poster on the street, and who took the time to make a note of my address and write me. I was also amused by these responses, though, because they ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous. (One guy wrote an angst-filled poem for me, entitled "Snapshots of a Void Screen," in which he lamented that "we linger in the stillness, feeling a fading desire for life...") Some people wrote admitting to not really understanding my beef with U.O. but wanting to know more. One person, who ended his response with an offer "to help in my campaign," wrote in asking, "Is this the kind of company that is insensitive, cold, and only interested in making money at the expense of others?" Sure.

The "conformity" part of my campaign seemed lost on most people: My new pen-pals wanted to congratulate me for drawing attention to U.O.'s exploitation of the self-conscious teen girl market. One Go-Girl-brand feminist named "batgrrrl" wrote "Good luck deconstructing whatever paradigm you're working on!" Spoken like a true Harvard Yard cheerleader. Some of these folks, though, were looking for a sympathetic ear into which to pour their own personal anorexia sob stories. I came to realize that there were a lot more people out there who had a personal history of anorexia than I had ever imagined. While this made me sad, having to respond to a stranger who obviously needed help made me extremely uncomfortable. In fact, anorexia is something that I have never experienced first-hand—the thought "I'm sooo fat" never ran through my head as a child or as a gawky brace-faced teenager. Although I have an unwavering love for greasy, fattening foods, particularly hot dogs and hamburgers, I am 5'8"/113 pounds. Maybe that's why I got a lot of comments from people who saw me in action and questioned what a skinny girl like myself was doing making any comment about Urban Outfitters' perpetuation of the waif aesthetic. I could only respond by saying that I don't starve myself, and that my point in creating those posters was that if weight is an issue for women in their awkward teenage years, they ceratinly don't need additional pressure from some second-rate, overpriced, false mecca of "urban" style.

One UMass grad student who wanted to interview me for a thesis paper she was doing about "Women Taking Up Space" wrote asking, "As a woman do you feel comfortable 'taking up space'?" Umm, yes. She then wanted me to describe some examples of times when I felt I had to "keep quiet, keep it down, pull it in, or behave myself because of my gender." And to finish these sentences: "Power is... ," "I take up space because... ," and "I would be happier if... ." I eventually wrote her back telling her that I was not the right person for her project, that I had never really considered myself as taking up space, and that I would never start a sentence with "I take up space because... ."

In an article written about me and my posters in the Boston Phoenix, the author (Geoff Edgers) talked to the manager of Urban Outfitters' Boston location and to Sue Otto, the company's creative director. The manager of U.O. Boston said that when she first saw the posters she assumed that it was the work of a disgruntled employee. (Hmmm, why would there be disgruntled employees? Because they get paid $5 an hour? Or because they have to empty their pockets to prove that they are not stealing anything every time they leave the store for any reason? Or maybe because they're sick of being coerced into ratting on their coworkers daily in required written reports for their managers?) Otto, who ended her response with, "Working here has been my whole life," took my posters a bit more personally. To rebut my claim that the company where she's worked for 13 years caters to women who wish they had the body of a 12-year-old, she volunteered her own physical dimensions, which happened to be 5'3"/165 pounds. Talk about loyalty!

I'm aware that a lot of the things that I have griped about with Urban Outfitters can be said of a million other companies. U.O. doesn't rip the money out of teenagers' hands, and thrift-store fashion was bound to trickle down from the starving artist types to suburban teens. But in a perfect world, kids everywhere would realize that they are being duped by marketing masterminds. These kids would then burn down all the Urban Outfitters polluting our cities, finally freeing themselves from the shackles of their chain wallets and the confines of their baby-doll T-shirts.