Monday, September 25

Would You Buy These Shirts for Your Daughter? (UPDATED)

These are T-shirt slogans I saw in the new JC Penney catalog for kids' clothes.

Spare me the DRAMA

I'm out of bed.
What more do you want?

Leave me alone.
I'm in a bad mood.

Buy it now
Tell Dad Later

BUY
ME
SOME
THING

is there a
POINT
to your
Babbling?

Give me five
$upport
my
$hopping
habit.


Then there are the plethora of pants with words on the rear end. Nothing says "LOOK AT MY UNDERAGE DAUGHTER'S ASS" like writing across her rear end. (Full disclosure: Little Girl does have one single pair of pants with "Cinderella" written across the tush, but my mother didn't notice it when she bought the set - she bought it for the jacket. Little Girl does not wear said pants very much, except when we go to dance class and she basically is wearing them in and out of the studio over her leotard.)

I have to wonder sometimes if they've got pedophiles working on kids' clothes. Some of them are really trashy. You can't imagine the thrill I had when I saw that prairie skirts had made a comeback!

UPDATE: Mona Charen writes on the same topic here, except that she has examples that are worse than mine. Here's a sampling of her article:

"For teenagers who chafe at clothing rules for midriffs and cleavage," the [Washington] Post explains, "'attitude' shirts offer a chance to show some skin, without showing skin."

Great. Let's hear it for women's liberation. Our 13-year-olds are free to look and act like sluts.
The tentativeness of the adults in this narrative is just amazing. These suggestive messages are in a "gray area." They must be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Really? Here are some of the examples offered in the Post story: "Two boys for every girl," "Pimps," "Got (slang expression for breasts)?" "Flirting my way to the top," "I am too hot to handle" and "I know what boys want."


In some instances, school officials demanded that the shirts be turned inside out or exchanged for a school T-shirt. But not in every case. Amazing. Of course, there are occasions, explained Fairfax County, Va., community relations coordinator Paul Regnier, when principals phone a kid's parents about an offensive shirt only to be told that the parents saw no problem.


I agree with Charen, this is a big problem with grown-ups more than with children. Our children only know what is right by what we teach them to be right. If a girl's parents teach her that it's just fine to wear a shirt that implies she puts out, then she's not going to understand what the big deal is about her wearing it to school. And, later, she's not going to understand why it's a big deal for her to actually put out. Yes, attitudes make a difference in how you act. And what you are exposed to makes a difference in what you decide is right and wrong. Really.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is the SFO Mom :)

You're absolutely right. A couple of years ago DD was bugging DH to buy her a pair of "butt pants" (that's what they call them here, isn't that disgusting!) with his grad school logo on them. He thought they were cute. I said, "Do you want every middle-aged sicko in town looking at her cute little butt?"

He offered to let her get a "hoodie" instead.

Christine the Soccer Mom said...

Barb! You got to post!

Maybe you have to be anonymous on Beta. I had to do so on other blogs that weren't Beta for a while.

We don't have much of a name for them, though since we homeschool, there aren't a lot of them on the kids we are around. But every time I see some girl with "CHEER" or even "HOTTIE" on her tush, I wonder what lecherous pedophile is getting his kicks from it.

I felt bad for my mother, because she didn't notice the writing on Little Girl's pants until she was wrapping them, and when they were opened, Hubby and I were not the best at masking our dismay. Oh, and the kicker is that they are hip huggers, too. We are talking a size 5 in clothes - meant for children who are 4 to 6 years old.

Basically, they are now the official "cover up my leotard as I walk from the car to the door of dance class" pants. Even Little Girl isn't too happy about writing on her butt. ;)

Barb Szyszkiewicz said...

Barb here again. Anonymous is the only way to go, evidently.

The Catalog In Question arrived at my house today. Of course Middle Sister wanted those T-shirts. Finally I had to resort to a shirt-by-shirt: This is not nice. This is not a good message. You could wear this one (See all chocolate, smell all chocolate, eat all chocolate) but NOT this one. Sure, the one with just the butterfly would be fine. It's the WORDS I don't like....

Did you love the headlines?
Give her some attitude.
For her wild side.
"She" is between the ages of 7 and 12, most likely. Chances are "she" has plenty of attitude all on her own, and frankly, the less wild, the better.

Halloween costumes are NO BETTER....

And what's up with this? Now it "sees" my name. ????

Christine the Soccer Mom said...

Yeah, the wild side. My daughter's wild side is more like a bobcat than what they are promoting. She asks to "wrestle with" Daddy nearly every night. Wrestling usually just means the girls gang up on and beat up their father. He removes his glasses and tickles them when they get too crazy.

And attitude? No, thank you, kids have WAY too much attitude these days.

Barb Szyszkiewicz said...

I do have to say, though, that *I* would like to have a "Spare me the DRAMA" shirt on Middle Sister's Attitude-to-the-Max days....

Stacey said...

The butt pants annoy me to no end. You're right - all they are is a huge "look at my butt!" cry.

If you'll excuse me, I'm going to go thank God, for the badrillionth time, that I had a boy. Hoo-wee.

Who are your heros?

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