Rant About Why I Love AE

      Last fall I was looking for a place to look and I considered a few different places like Target, Victoria's Secret and Anthropologie. I looked around for a while then decided to apply to a store I never thought of... American Eagle. (When I was a kid, my mom, never let me buy clothes from American Eagle. She always said, "The store smells weird, it's too expensive and the close aren't modest." So we stuck to places like Target and Good Will. Besides, only the cool, popular kids wore American Eagle.)  I applied and got the job pretty quickly. Since I had never shopped at American Eagle EVER I really had no idea what the store was about. I had no idea who they sponsored, what they sold, or if anyone even shops there anymore!
    The first day I started working there I was on the Arie side. I had to rearrange a bra wall so I was there the entire day. After I finished I was walking around and making sure everything looked fine when I noticed on the wall there were pictures of our Arie models. That's when I really fell in love with Arie. All of our models looked so different. We have models like Diana Veras, Barbie Ferreira, Iskra Lawrence and Dana Patterson. They are so gorgeous in different ways and that's what I love about it. My favorite is Dana Patterson, I've talked to her a few times via social media and she's the sweetest. She used to model for another company and they made her gain a bunch of weight to be a size 16. She wasn't happy until she started working for AE, they don't regulate the girl's weight. The same goes for American Eagle as well. All the models we have on both sides are all so different. What comes with having female plus size models means clothes made for bigger girls!! I love that even more. I'm not a size 2 and neither are Dana or Iskra so American Eagle tailors their clothes to sizes 0-14.
    I used to shop at places like H&M and Forever 21 for cheap jeans before I realized how much their jeans SUCK. The first time I tried on American Eagle jeans I realized there was absolutely no going back. AE's sizes are real in comparison to H&M and Forever 21. A few days ago I tried on (THE BIGGEST SIZE JEANS H&M CARRIES) size 14  jeans and I couldn't get them past my hips. That's kind of ridiculous. I just get really frustrated at huge mainstream stores. They're putting big numbers on small clothes.
    I like to check out Forever 21. I never buy anything from there, I just go to make fun of their clothes. They'll make a really cute bomber then on the back put "Taco Tuesday Makes Me Happy" ...  (It's all crazy overpriced as well.) I will constantly walk around and see a top that looks like it's made for a 5-year-old and it'll be a Large. It drives me crazy.
Conclusively I have to say I admire American Eagle for their models, their sizes, campaigns and body-positive
atmosphere.