Too Pretty To Do Homework?
How the media is failing our kids
by Kelly Dolin
in Family
on Sunday, December 11, 2011 1:35 PM
The Washington Post reports that JC Penney has been taken to task for marketing a t-shirt that reads, “I’m too pretty to do homework so my brother has to do it for me.”
To make matters worse, the description of the shirt on the JC Penney website reads, “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.”
My daughter is cute and sassy. We’re not going out of our way to encourage the sassy part. It’s coming along quite nicely on its own, thank you very much. And we don’t plan to tell her she’s too pretty for homework.
Not long ago The Learning Channel found itself the target of much angrier protests after its show “Toddlers and Tiaras” showcased a three-year-old dressed like a prostitute. This piece on the sexualization of pre-school girls describes the whole debacle.
Many years before my daughter Ainsley was born, I was shopping in a popular department store and sighted a t-shirt in the girls’ department, a t-shirt with a line that clearly referenced losing your virginity.
Who manufactures this garbage, I thought, and what parent would actually purchase it?
These were not marketed to teens earning clothes’ money while working the drive through at McDonald’s. These were sized for six, eight, and ten year-old children who obviously weren’t financing their own wardrobes.
I love having a daughter. I love dressing her up. I wouldn’t want to calculate how much money I’ve spent on bows and clips in the past 25 months. When she was running around in her brother’s Batman cape the other day, I thought it was high time we invested in some girlier dress-up clothes.
Padded bras and plunging necklines, however, will not be on our shopping list.
Years ago, Mattel found itself in hot water after introducing “Teen Talk Barbie” who, among other canned phrases, would pout, “Math is tough!” I don’t know how long she lasted, but Mattel had the good sense to delete one of the 270 sentences Barbie would randomly mutter and to apologize for offending the masses. (To be clear, Mattel apologized; Barbie did not).
Marketing is a fascinating field. I have pondered what goes through the minds of creatives sitting around a conference table trying to dream up the next Ferbie or Tickle Me Elmo, the next Trivial Pursuit or Twister. A while back I penned a post delving into those great minds that produced fake vomit, fart whistles, and alien test tube slime (all of which at least two of my children would flat out l-o-v-e).
Fashion is a world unto itself and teen fashion, well, I won’t even go there. I gave up clothes shopping for nieces when they turned about nine and suddenly showed an aversion to Peter Pan collars and pinafores. I’d buy them jewelry or a t-shirt. They would thank me politely and, oddly enough, I would never see the item again. Can you say Goodwill? Even their mother began to strike out.
“You’re clothes are cute,” I remember my sister telling my oldest niece.
“I don’t want to be cute,” came the plaintive response. “I want to be cool.”
I don’t really do cool, lacking some genetic marker deemed fashionable. I strive for neat, and some days I pull it off nicely. With this wordy disclaimer, I still don’t get some of what department stores throw the way of little kids. I get that increasingly younger kids are drawn to phrases that range from funny to mouthy, from edgy to lewd. But who buys these things? Presumably adults. Parents, no less!
I took a few education courses at a local university. I was surprised at the level of angst and resentment many women felt about the opportunities they were discouraged from pursuing as elementary and high school students. They absolutely picked up a line of thought that said “Women can’t do math” and “Women can’t do science.”
This was not my experience. Every math and science class I took in high school was taught by a woman; most were taught by nuns. Sister Helen Murphy, Sister Evangeline Nestor, Sister Agnes Joseph Sun—these women were smart, exacting, and every bit as formidable as their names. I came away from high school thinking that my only limitations were my own drive and initiative. Nobody told me I couldn’t do math or science.
T-shirts shouldn’t send this message either. And when they do, parents—drum roll, please—shouldn’t buy them. If anyone can do math, it’s the accounting departments of huge retailers.
Boys’ fashions are not immune to the trend. This piece on back to school t-shirts caught my eye as well. The author shares:
“I’m So Bored” spelled out the words, carefully crafted to look like the periodic table, on my son’s new t-shirt he received for his birthday. As a former chemistry teacher, I hated it —- excuse me, but a class where you have permission to light things on fire is not boring! —- but, of course, my son loved it. He giggled, “Yeah, mom, I hate school!”
While a lot of attention has been paid to the slut-ification of little girls’ clothing, not much has been said about the dumbing down of boys’ apparel.
“My brain hurts” reads one t-shirt with a picture of Bart Simpson and a math book. “Looking for trouble? You found it!” declares a shirt from Target. “If homework is work, then when do I get paid?” quips a boys t-shirt from Kohls. There’s the ever popular “My favorite subjects are lunch and recess” shirt, and my personal least favorite reads “Let’s just skip school so I can start my rock star training.” Yes, these shirts are funny, but I hate the message that t-shirts like these send to boys.
I agree with the writer on all but one point—the t-shirts aren’t funny; they’re moronic. “My brain hurts”? Falls flat with me, anyway.
Around here we use apparel to send important messages, too - “My Dad Rocks”, “Daddy’s Little Princess”, “Michigan Wolverines”.
“I’m So Bored”? Been there, heard that, don’t need the t-shirt.
—Kelly Dolin blogs at In the Sheepfold.
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