JC Penney should fire the idiots who thought it was a good idea to market a t-shirt for girls that says “I’m too pretty to do homework so my brother has to do it for me.” JC Penney not only thought this shirt was OK to sell in their stores, but they went even further with their website description for the item, which read:
“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”
Now, it’s clear from reading some of the comments on articles about this issue that a lot of folks simply don’t get what’s wrong with this type of shirt. “Can’t you people take a joke?” is the typical response from the oblivious (actually, it’s more likely to read: “Cant u take a joke?”). Let’s outline clearly why concerned parents and smart women need to stand up against this sort of crap:
Our young girls are constantly under an assault of media that tells them that they are “less than” if they are not pretty, thin and flawless. From women’s fashion magazines to the strippers that are now becoming ubiquitous as background in certain television scenes, girls are bombarded with false images of women and advertising designed to make them feel physically inferior so they will become lifelong consumers of cosmetics, beauty products, and plastic surgery.
Is it a conspiracy? If you define “conspiracy” as large companies trying to brainwash young customers into becoming lifelong addicts to their products, yes, it sure is.
T-shirts like this are just another way to feed insecurity into the minds of average looking girls. What parent would buy this shirt for a kid who was ugly? What sort of narcissism is this shirt promoting when it is bought for a pretty girl? What sort of message does it tell her?
Many, many years ago Susan Faludi wrote a seminal book on feminist called “Backlash,” which described how many advances made by the feminist movement were in danger of being lost due to a backlash against the movement. As she noted at the time, much of the “backlash” was insidious and subtle. Nowadays, no-one questions the right of women to work, but the backlash consists of trying to put girls into boxes based on their appearance. I actually get less upset at conservative religious people who think women should stay at home and raise kids – at least there is some respect for the ideal of old-fashioned womanhood there. But the trend towards elevating beauty as the only value a girl has is ultimately misogynistic at its core.
