When I heard about the group of Pennsylvania teenage girls who started a "girlcott" of Abercrombie & Fitch because they were offended by some of the store's T-shirts, I headed downtown to see what the fuss was about.

These are called attitude T's. They're everywhere, and they've been around in one form or another for as long as there have been irons to transfer designs onto undershirts.

Sure, some of the T-shirts are tacky, like the one that calls attention to the wearer's bust line with the slogan, "Who needs brains when you have these?"

But a group of girls in Pennsylvania think the T-shirts are demeaning as well as tacky, so they told Abercrombie & Fitch they wouldn't shop there as long as the T-shirts were on the shelves.

One of their main objections is T-shirts that seemingly pit girls against girls. "Do I make you look fat?" is one. "Don't be jealous" is another.

"We, as young women and girls, do not need to create extra competition between our ranks," 16-year-old Emma Blackman-Mathis of Pittsburgh told a reporter last week.

They landed interviews last week on "Today," CNN and Fox. And this week, Abercrombie & Fitch capitulated to a degree by removing some of the T-shirts from some of its stores. It wasn't a franchisewide move, however, as evidenced by the piles of T-shirts that remain on sale (starting at $24.50) at the Anchorage store.

Now, I'm all for grrrl power. I believe in equal pay for equal work. I believe in equal opportunity. I believe that given a chance, girls and women can do just about anything boys and men can do.

I don't believe a T-shirt that claims "Blondes are adored, brunettes are ignored" is an insult to girls with brown hair. To me it's tossing a bone to blondes, who need something to make up for all of those dumb-blonde jokes.

What I can't figure out is why they targeted Abercrombie & Fitch when hundreds of stores stock T-shirts that degrade women and turn them into sex objects.

Just one floor below Anchorage's Abercrombie & Fitch is a store filled with T-shirts, crude and otherwise. "I'll be using these to my advantage," reads the bust line slogan on one of them. "I wish these were brains," reads another.

Critics in recent years have blasted the retailer for edgy marketing maneuvers aimed to attract teens and college-age customers. The most famous of those were the catalogs a couple of years ago that included photos of nude models.

The Anchorage store, dimly lit and filled mostly with jeans, is adorned with giant black-and-white photos of hot young men and women flashing considerable skin. But the only thing I found offensive was that the store discriminates against any girl or woman who weighs more than, say, 120 pounds.

Even if I wanted to girlcott something in the store, I couldn't, because nothing in the store would fit me. The T-shirts marked XL look like they'd be skin-tight on someone who normally wears a medium. The T-shirts marked XS look like they'd fit a toddler. My visit to Abercrombie & Fitch came on the same day I had zipped the 20-pound liner into my winter coat, adding to my bull-in-a-china-shop discomfort.

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