American malls closing! Pretty boys everywhere totally, like, freaked out.

Brent arrived at his favorite mall to get an Orange Julius and cruise for high school girls only to find the doors locked and the shops empty. He freaked.

Until recently, the American pretty boy hadn’t really paid the economy much mind. Brent, a 21 year-old who finds ‘pretty boy’ offensive and prefers, ‘Abercrombie-Eagle-boy’ (AEB),’ suggested that these young men didn’t think the economy was as important as more ‘pressing’ issues like, styling their hair, texting hotties from the local community college and practicing their Friday night dance moves in the mirror: “I mean, it’s not like the economy has anything to do with being totally GQ or anything. Asking us if we’re concerned about the economy and stuff is like asking an EMO kid if he’s, like, excited about Banana Republic’s new line of khakis.”

Sadly though, reality came crashing down on Brent last week when he arrived at his favorite Mall to find that it had closed its doors for good. “At first I thought it was probably like a terrorist threat or something. Like that would be the only reason the mall would be closed on like a Wednesday afternoon, right? But then I cupped my hands on the glass and looked in and saw that all the stores were empty. Gap, Pacific Sunwear, the Sunglasses Kiosk, everything! I panicked and started texting my peeps n’ stuff but there was nothing I could do. I felt so alone. So, like, incomplete. I cried.”

Brent isn’t alone. AEB’s across the nation have been losing their native habitats at an alarming rate. In the past 12 months retail spending in the U.S. has dropped 9.8 percent causing many ‘anchor stores’ like Sears and JC Penney at malls to close their doors. Although no self-respecting AEB would be caught dead in a one of these department stores, the demise of these larger stores has reduced traffic to the rest of a Mall’s boutiques which AEB’s, like Brent, depend on for their styling supplies and their identity.

Laz - out of the mall but not out of ideas.

But as the reality of mall closings has slowly sunk in, AEB’s everywhere are fighting back and trying to preserve their ways. Laz, an AEB from Fremont, CA says, “we’ve decided to circle our wagons and hunker down for tough times like all the, like, normal people have. But that doesn’t mean we’re gonna, let our good looks become, like, collateral devastation or something. We’re organizing some events that will let us continue to be totally trendy without having to rely on the malls and spending hekka money and stuff.” Some of the events that Laz and others have started include a fashion commune for members to share designer jeans, ironic t-shirts and ethnic necklaces. One particular group of industrious AEB’s in Dearborn Michigan have even started a series of tutorials that provide do-it-yourself advice like, weathering your own jeans, sneaker cleaning 101 and ‘Beyond the Food Court – a practical guide to picking up high school girls during the recession.’

The efforts made by Laz and other proactive AEB’s may, however, be to little to late. In the past two years alone more than 400 shopping malls have closed their doors, putting the American pretty boy very close to the endangered species list. When asked if he felt that trying to preserve the AEB’s customs beyond the confines the Mall was a little like trying to prevent the forward progress of a glacier, Laz simply responds, “What’s a glacier?”

Also affected by Mall closings are teeny boppers, mall rats, arcade dorks and whatever those people that hang out at Hot Topic are.