"Abercrappie" is what my youngest brother called Abercrombie & Fitch after Ryan, our 15-year-old sibling, begged for the worn-looking, overpriced clothes du jour.

Shirts, pants, sweaters, socks -- Ryan wanted Abercrombie everything and he stumped for the stuff like a wide-eyed activist. In the kitchen, tossing punches at Josh and me, he used the word "quality." When I walked away, he chased me with a speech about owning "just a few things that you love to wear." He even suggested that I pick up some Abercrombie -- "It might help you get a girlfriend," he offered with very little tact.

Christmas was only a few days away and the smart-alecky banter -- "I want X" vs. "So what, you can't have it" -- rang typical, as much a part of our family's holiday tradition as egg nog. But a specific brand request: That was new.

I remembered longing for Air Jordans, Champion sweatshirts, even Ralph Lauren Polo shirts. But my parents shamed me into either buying them myself or squeezing them out of relatives. On occasion, Mom or Dad gave in, but they always had a choice. Never, strong as my longing was, had one designer inspired the single-branded passion I heard in Ryan's voice. Somehow, Abercrombie was different: more manipulative and more coveted than both its past and present rivals.

That drug-like draw angered me. After watching packs of pimply teenage boys in Massachusetts malls ogle the boobs and brands of the opposite sex, I couldn't help but want Ryan to swim against the current in this sea of conformity.

I swore I would never buy him the Abercrombie clothing I saw his peers wearing like a uniform. In fact, I decided I would play with his repulsive desire by putting a "Just kidding!" note inside an Abercrombie gift-certificate envelope.

First, though, I tried to fight back with words.

"Why would you want to be a billboard?" I asked. "They're not paying you to advertise their name."

Ryan went for finely tuned sarcasm. "But it's just so cool," he said, trying to irk me in the short term while offering the kind of self-deprecation that just might convince me to give him what he wanted later on.

By that time, my question was largely rhetorical. I already knew the real reason he was lusting after these clothes. Only two months earlier, Ryan had begun fusing himself to Nicole, a blond A student who won our family's favor by staunching Ryan's class-clown tendencies.

But while she kept his bragging to a minimum, Nicole also amplified Ryan's navel-, chest- and shoulder-gazing. When I picked her up on Christmas night, she wore a yellow Abercrombie T-shirt, and as I drove the magnetic couple back to our family's house, A&F earned at least as much air time as the latest gossip about teachers and other high school trysts. Nicole, like many women present and past, had become the arbiter of her man's taste. And in her court, Abercrombie was king.

"I think it's all she wears," said my mother that same afternoon, chuckling. She had already decided that Nicole passed muster, so her criticism remained light. Still, as a frugal New Hampshire native who stocks her shelves with generic foods and her closets with closeouts, my mom became easily incensed when discussing Abercrombie's prices.

"Seventy dollars for pants! It's outrageous."

What's more, as a mother who objects to premarital sex with a puritanical fervor, she also objected to the company's marketing campaign. Essentially, it sexualizes America's love of the aristocratic golden boy and girl -- the blond, WASPish, Ivy League party animals most recently represented by Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow in "The Talented Mr. Ripley."

Ads for Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger and Nautica have played on similar themes for years, but Abercrombie's models look younger, more collegiate. And Abercrombie plays closer to the frat-boy mentality, plastering naked male chests in most of its 205 store windows, while selling 300-page, quarterly catalogs that cost $6 and include interviews with porn stars and articles about drinking.

Indeed, women appear in the ads as well, but the boys rule. When they're not baring their asses to clamber naked aboard a dock or laying prostrate in the grass, the models huddle, flex and pose in store foregrounds like 10-foot trophies, a fact that most teens couldn't help but notice and want to copy in their own lives.

My mother didn't much care about whether the bare butts were male or female. She objected to what she perceived as the encouragement of sex. In so doing, she was in cahoots with Illinois Lt. Gov. Corinne Wood, who called for a consumer boycott of Abercrombie because of the sexually explicit nature of its holiday "Naughty or Nice" catalog.

But as I tried to decide what to buy Ryan and my two other adolescent siblings for Christmas, the sex didn't bother me. The brand's dominance did. That dominance, in my opinion, has less to do with skin than with the company's fusion of two settings: the city of hip-hop lore, and the college of the frat-inspired free-for-all. The former can be seen in the company's baggy, urban-inspired designs; clean-cut models on grassy fields embody the latter.

Sex is a mythical part of these settings, but parents often fail to realize that these places -- and thus Abercrombie -- symbolize more than the longing to get naked. Ultimately, they represent freedom, excitement -- a wide array of adventures that remain off-limits to the teenage children of today's SUV-driving parents.

The Reynoldsburg, Ohio, company has posted 29 consecutive quarters of record sales and earnings, making it one of the world's best-performing retail brands. Surveyed teenagers repeatedly rank it near the top in terms of "coolness." To see that success only in terms of sex implies that teenagers are nothing more than their hormones, and that they are the company's only customers.

Neither implication is correct. I know adults who wear Abercrombie clothing, if only the shirts that carry the company name on the inside label. And as for sex: Yes, many teenagers' bodies insist that the subject come up, and often. But hormones affect more than sexual desire. As adults, in our own lives, we know this. But when we eye our sons and brothers, amnesia strikes.

Somehow we have forgotten -- probably because of our fears -- that the hormone-inspired energy of youth leads most often to neither sex nor violence. The brandishing of bare chests by teenage boys and their incessant raunchy chatter represent a healthy desire to learn, to push against adult boundaries, to discover the art of living. It's the same force that can be heard on the first Beck album, completed before he was old enough to vote.

Even though Abercrombie taps into this pent-up energy with controversial content, the images don't matter. The company is "cool" not because of the sex or the beer, but because these subjects signify a much wider idea, namely the freedom to live as the kid -- not the parent -- sees fit.

Opining on Abercrombie's appeal, however, didn't much change my decision to boycott the store. I still wanted Ryan to be above it all. But after putting my note in the gift certificate envelope, my smugness stung me. I already had bought books and movie passes. I feared the trick certificate placed me at risk of becoming the pedantic big brother.

So I gave in. On Christmas eve, I bought Ryan a fleece jacket, marked down from $49.99 to $29.99. I justified it by remarking that the name "Abercrombie" only appeared on the inside tag and on the zipper. Ryan had been getting good grades, so I figured he deserved it. I figured my love should trump my politics. I figured his tastes mattered more than mine.

Much to my surprise, my parents did the same thing. On Christmas morning, Ryan opened not just my Abercrombie box, but several others. We had resisted the call of the $70 pants, but ultimately we had given in. We had conformed, accepting Ryan's argument for "quality" and "clothes worth loving." And we all knew it. Mom, Dad and I glanced at Ryan as he stripped to try on each jersey, then stared guiltily back at each other.

"I can't believe it," Dad said.

"The little twit got what he wanted," I added. "And Abercrappie won. They got us."

Then and now, I continue to fight back. I explain to Ryan how he's been made a pawn, a cookie-cutter version of youth. I'm hoping that he'll learn to dress and live for himself, not his peers or his girlfriends. I'm hoping he'll rebel against Abercrombie and his peers.

If and when he does, we'll still have other battles to fight. Joshua, my 13-year-old brother, coiner of the term "Abercrappie," didn't get any of the company's clothing for Christmas. But when he opened the surf sweatshirt I got him, his first question was: "Where did you get it?" And as he watched Ryan open box after box from Abercrombie, Josh's eyes opened wide with yearning. Later, he dropped hints that maybe Abercrombie wasn't so bad.

Ultimately, I'm not surprised. When Hannibal Lecter asked, "What do we covet?" he couldn't have been more right in answering, "We covet what we see."

My only wish is that suburban, teenaged style looked less like a dress code. I wish Abercrombie had stiffer competition; that kids would demand more from their merchants. But most of all, I wish Ryan, Nicole and so many other teenagers would act as smart and savvy as I know they are.

Until then, I'll buy them what they want -- then try and convince them to hate it.