I saw this on The Consumerist today and just had to share. The lovely commenters at The Consumerist have already filled in their "You're Making Too Big a Deal of This" square on their bingo cards. Yes, it's just an ugly shirt that is ending up in the clearance rack behind all the stretched out sweaters and jeggings, but, as had been pointed out time and time again, it's not the actual item that is the problem, it's the underlying assumptions that the item promotes.
JC Penny has already yanked the shirt, so don't bother trying to buy one to be ironic (you hipster, you). Irony doesn't make this message ok, by the way. Susan Douglas points it out best in Enlightened Sexism: "For media-savvy youth, bombarded their entire lives by almost every marketing ploy in the book, irony means that you can look as if you are absolutely not seduced by the mass media, while then being seduced by the media, while wearing a knowing smirk." Sure, you know it's stupid and you laugh at it and no one takes it seriously. But it's still there, still stupid and still representing an undercurrent of thought.
I say the first part isn't the part people should get up in arms about; I was more pissed about the second part. First of all, no one I went to school with would ever risk their grades by letting any sibling, regardless of gender, get their grubby little paws on it. Second of all, does any one else get a creepy, incest-y vibe? Like she's so pretty she's able to seduce her blood relative to do her bidding? And it's all the creepier because she's age 7-16?
Frankly, this shirt doesn't represent one guy in a back room who needs therapy. Many people had to approve, design, promote and sell this image, so it seems like quite a lot of people thought it was ok. Maybe they all need therapy. They're definitely color blind, at least.
I close with the best response I could think of at the time, which I shared on Consumerist with great pride. Take it, P!nk:
This. All of this.
ReplyDeleteThe last part was the worst, perpetuating the idea that girls can just use their looks to get what they want in life. Being pretty and smart cannot coexist. Empowerment!
I suppose it could have been worse. The last part could have said to make the ugly girls do the homework.
This is how we create a nation of knuckle-draggers.