Name: Tess
Home: St. Louis
Rant: T-shirts
I want to know: What kind of parents buy their kids these horrible t-shirts?
Just in time for last-minute back-to-school shopping, the Target circular in today's paper has "short-sleeve attitude tees" for girls with the following messages:
Okay I'm Perfect, Now Stop Staring
I'm in Charge Here: The Parents Are Just for Show
When I'm Not Happy Nobody's Happy
Spend Your Money on Me
Boys can sport the following:
Tried To Be Good But I Got Bored
It's my brother's fault
Enough With the Learning Already
Home + Work: Two Words That Should Never Be Together
These kinds of shirts have been in style for some time now, which tells me that some people must be buying them. Forgive me for being an un-hip, humorless adult, but what kind of parent buys these for their kids or allows kids to wear them?
If you are a parent, what is going through your mind when you buy clothing that pits your children against each other or declares that you yourself are "just for show"? Is family harmony so easy to achieve that it doesn't matter if your children's clothing undermines it? Why are you letting your children tell the world that they are in control in your family? Why are you allowing your sons to be cynical about learning and announce to their peers and teachers that they cannot be moral or work hard? Why are you allowing your daughters to announce that they are spoiled and they must be showered with material goods?
What are you thinking??? Those all sound like serious problems that need to be addressed within the family, not broadcast to everyone who can read. Or are you not thinking at all about the messages those shirts are sending to strangers, family members, friends, and the community?
Just in time for last-minute back-to-school shopping, the Target circular in today's paper has "short-sleeve attitude tees" for girls with the following messages:
Okay I'm Perfect, Now Stop Staring
I'm in Charge Here: The Parents Are Just for Show
When I'm Not Happy Nobody's Happy
Spend Your Money on Me
Boys can sport the following:
Tried To Be Good But I Got Bored
It's my brother's fault
Enough With the Learning Already
Home + Work: Two Words That Should Never Be Together
These kinds of shirts have been in style for some time now, which tells me that some people must be buying them. Forgive me for being an un-hip, humorless adult, but what kind of parent buys these for their kids or allows kids to wear them?
If you are a parent, what is going through your mind when you buy clothing that pits your children against each other or declares that you yourself are "just for show"? Is family harmony so easy to achieve that it doesn't matter if your children's clothing undermines it? Why are you letting your children tell the world that they are in control in your family? Why are you allowing your sons to be cynical about learning and announce to their peers and teachers that they cannot be moral or work hard? Why are you allowing your daughters to announce that they are spoiled and they must be showered with material goods?
What are you thinking??? Those all sound like serious problems that need to be addressed within the family, not broadcast to everyone who can read. Or are you not thinking at all about the messages those shirts are sending to strangers, family members, friends, and the community?
posted by Tess | 5:00 AM
4 Comments:
I know. I wouldn't buy my girls Bratz dolls if they were the only toys on the planet. I plan to rant a bit about something like this on my blog today, about how I am more restrictive than the other parents in my apartment. Sigh. Uphill battle.
Hey, we just watched TSATW too! I was wondering what Kaela would think of it because at points it made me very uncomfortable, and she's more apt to get uncomfortable about interpersonal conflict than I am.
1) I saw TSATW a couple of months ago. What a difficult and painful movie. What's especially fascinating about it to me is how very painfully intimate it is. It's a relatively short film in which nothing "MAJOR" happens, and yet it's devastating and ugly.
2) As much as I'm bothered by the cynicism of those shirts, especially targeted at young people, I'm equally disturbed by how the messages have been segmented. It's almost as bad as the Barbie doll that said, "Math is hard." And are the shirts shaping the mindsets or simply tapping into an already cynical youth? Either way, I don't like them one bit.
Target has been a BIG Problem with a capital "P" in the tee shirt area for birth, too. They've gotten a lot of guff from doulas, midwives and mamas when they offered shirts on their Web site which read, "I see an epidural in my future" and the like.
Hh
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