Her shirt says what?!
Source: JC Penney
JC Penney, an American retailer, caused quite a fuss yesterday with this little shirt, aimed at girls aged 7 and upwards. To be honest, when I visited their site, I couldn’t decide which I disliked more – the slogan on the shirt, or the accompanying blurb “Who has time for homework when there’s a new Justin Bieber** album out? She’ll love this tee that’s just as cute and sassy as she is.”
Groan.
Thankfully JC Penney have since seen sense (read: decided that the shirt had done its job in creating publicity for them, but now they had to be seen to do the “responsible” thing and remove it because they have become aware that it is offensive to some) and removed the shirt.
I’m not at all surprised by the actions of JC Penney. After all, they are a large retailer whose objective is to make money. What surprised me were the varied reactions to the shirt. Across the blogs and the message boards where I read about it, there were as many people who saw no harm in the shirt as there were people who thought it was inappropriate.
For the record, in case it’s not clear, I am not in favour of this shirt. I think it is harmful, in an insidious way, and I think it is awful to see it marketed at that target demographic.
Those in favour of the shirt seemed for the most part to be trying to explain how it could be worn ironically by a girl who is in fact both pretty and a straight A student. Look, I get wearing ironic t-shirt slogans when you’re an older teenager or a college student with a statement to make, but seriously, do 7 year olds wear clothes ironically?
You may argue that JC Penneys aimed the shirt at 7-to-16 year olds, and that the older end of that age group would indeed wear clothes ironically. But take a look at the shirt – do you honestly think it is aimed at the older end of that age bracket. I don’t.
And move away from the obvious message about little girls, for whom being cute clearly means being able to avoid your personal responsibilities and pass them off on someone else. What about the message for little boys? Sure you could argue that it implies that boys are smarter than girls and that’s why he does the homework and not her. But I think if you look a little deeper, the message is actually if a girl is pretty, you must do things for her. After all, girls can get by on their looks, right?
What do you think? Do slogans like this bother you on kids’ clothes? Or do you think all that gender stereotyping is just a bit of harmless fun and I’m over-reacting?
(**Coincidentally, I unfollowed someone on Twitter two days ago for the crime of annoying me by retweeting Justin Bieber tweets. I certainly wouldn’t be advocating little girls skip their homework to listen to a new Bieber album.)
You’re totally not over-reacting! And I agree that slogans like this are damaging in a way that is not obvious to everybody. I’m pretty against gender-stereotyping in kids clothes in general. I try to buy plain-ish clothes in as far as I can for my little guy, yes they’re still boyish but I try not to deck him out in blue and covered head to toe in whatever Disney has deemed boys should be ‘into’. From what I can make out the world is ruled by big companies out to make a profit in ANY way they can…sigh…
You’re totally not over-reacting! And I agree that slogans like this are damaging in a way that is not obvious to everybody. I’m pretty against gender-stereotyping in kids clothes in general. I try to buy plain-ish clothes in as far as I can for my little guy, yes they’re still boyish but I try not to deck him out in blue and covered head to toe in whatever Disney has deemed boys should be ‘into’. From what I can make out the world is ruled by big companies out to make a profit in ANY way they can…sigh…
I agree with you 100%. I saw a link to a story about this shirt on NPR. As the mother of an 11 year old girl, there is NO WAY that I would want her to wear this…and I know she would not want to anyway, fortunately. You’re right to point out that it has a negative effect on both girls and boys. It’s similar to the Barbie doll that said “Math is hard – let’s go shopping!” that was pulled from shelves a few years ago or the “Future WAG” shirt was that was pulled from Penneys in the last year or so. It is not harmess fun. Girls are repeatedly bombarded with this type of awful gender stereotyping which empasises their looks and/or sexuality (!) as the most important thing about them – it’s a minefield and something we have been talking about quite a lot at home as Miss M has got older. Of course there are stereotypes aimed at boys too that are VERY unhelpful to say the least but it’s the sexualisation of girls from such a young age that I find most disturbing.
I agree with you 100%. I saw a link to a story about this shirt on NPR. As the mother of an 11 year old girl, there is NO WAY that I would want her to wear this…and I know she would not want to anyway, fortunately. You’re right to point out that it has a negative effect on both girls and boys. It’s similar to the Barbie doll that said “Math is hard – let’s go shopping!” that was pulled from shelves a few years ago or the “Future WAG” shirt was that was pulled from Penneys in the last year or so. It is not harmess fun. Girls are repeatedly bombarded with this type of awful gender stereotyping which empasises their looks and/or sexuality (!) as the most important thing about them – it’s a minefield and something we have been talking about quite a lot at home as Miss M has got older. Of course there are stereotypes aimed at boys too that are VERY unhelpful to say the least but it’s the sexualisation of girls from such a young age that I find most disturbing.