When the Punchline Isn't Funny

Not my brother...

Let me be the first to state that I have a sense of humor and it is not always the most politically correct. I can take a good ethnic joke and have cracked more than a few of my own. Being of Irish/Italian Catholic ancestry and having an illiterate parent will do wonders for giving you material and a tough skin.

That said, the shirt itself wouldn't be half as bad if it was being marketed as a cheeky shirt for college girls. Except this shirt was on the market to be sold to girls from age 6-12.

Really?

For me this is particularly disheartening as I was raised in the late 80s and early 90s and was just reaching the end of general attitude that it was okay for girls to not understand math. Sally Ride was an icon for little girls as proof that a girl could accomplish any occupation. Even before we heard about the glass ceiling, we saw it cracking bit by bit.

Personally, it struck home even further given my roots in an urban poor area of Chicago with parents that failed to complete high school (my mum quit going to school regularly by about the 7th grade and is functionally illiterate) and was told on countless occasions that an education was the way to make it in today's economy. Even around 1990 everyone knew that the Iron Curtain was falling, China was growing and we would have to face an increasingly international world that would require an educated and skilled populace to compete.

Even Barbie had a job as I was growing up, rather impressive ones at that. I think I ruined her chances in the corporate world by chopping her hair into a mohawk and coloring her hair with markers, but eccentric kids seldom wait long demonstrate themselves.

Because we learned nothing from Sally Ride

Twenty years later it is irritating to see a return to marketing girls as nothing more than sex objects after decades of increasing opportunities and an understanding of equality. In the early 90s when the Barbie came out that spoke vapid phrases such as "math is tough" and of the merits of mall shopping, parents and the media rebelled on indoctrinating young girls with the message that their contribution to society was consumerism.

We're trying to liberate the women of Afghanistan so that they can be told that they're pretty little bimbos? It is baffling that something like this could not only be presented in a marketing meeting but approved, handed over to designers and make it as far as reaching store shelves and JC Penny's website and distributed on the internet before someone within the company sees anything wrong with the message presented?

I typically hold my tongue for the shirts bedazzled in rhinestones forming the words "princess" and the like as innocent, if misguided ideas. Of course I am increasingly seeing shirts in public such as this that seem to place value on kids who are "spoiled", "brats" etc. Pardon me for thinking that these kinds of messages might just influence a child's self perception.


I suppose it could be worse.... it could always be this one:

At least you know it's jailbait in this case

Sure it's targeting a slightly older and thus self-conscious demographic than the homework shirt, but this is wrong on so many levels given that the joke ONLY works if you are underage. Teenagers are plenty aware of their budding sexuality without marketers coming in with goofy t-shirts.

At best this just further advocates the idea of the role of women as a sex symbol, but at worse is likely to attract the attention of the exact wrong sort of person. Pedophiles seldom are concerned about the fact a girl is underage before going after her and wearing clothing that suggests you're okay with this is just asking for a bad outcome.

Is it asking so much to have a touch of self worth? Make a crude joke amongst friends all you like, but can we at least let the kids grow up and find their own sense of personality before turning them into billboards for the anti-feminist movement. I can assure you that telling your little girl that she can work to accomplish something great is going to go a lot further than letting her out of the house with a shirt that advocates slacking off in school.