This just perpetuates the 'pretty, but dumb' myth. I don't have daughters, but my adorable nieces are too intelligent to wear such trash.
I taught a girl last year who would always tell me she was too pretty for math. But then she would do her work and make top grades on everything.
I can not BELIEVE the number of threads I've read recently that deal with some form of "I have a problem because I'm pretty." And I've got to wonder exactly what objective measure is being used to measure all these beautiful people. I have never in my life heard of so many self proclaimed beauties.
I am tempted to find these on a display and leave a reply note that says something like "Too bad that one day you will lose your looks. Maybe your millionaire brother will support you, but probably not after you made him do all your homework."
when I saw this I laughed and sthought about buying it for my daughter. Now my daughter (now in college) mind you is a smart intelligent girl. She is very confident in who she is and what she wants. She has always been this way. She is a blonde, blue eyed CA girl with an hour glass figure. Her godmother and I call her our little barbie doll, mainly because she is anything but. She would wear this shirt just to see peoples reactions.
I am not a fan of any of the tshirts students wear in regards to school/homework of that nature. My first thought when I see a kid wearing that, "really, thats the impression you want to give to your teacher?"
Yarnwoman, my first response was like yours. At first I thought this shirt was marketed for college age women, and for them, I think it's sufficiently ironic. Then I read the article, and it said that it was in the "girls" section, and I was disappointed. How many more ways does the media have to scream at this girls "your looks are all that matters?" It's depressing.
Hey, it happens. Today on my way home, I had to drive out of my way to a different gas station because my usual was having a pump malfunction. If only I were not so annoying beautiful, life wouldn't be so hard. :lol:
:haha::haha: Yep, that's the reason. I never realized it before, but after the past few weeks around here I'm positive you're right. My condolences.
It's interesting to read the perspective of the female members here. When I saw the title thread and T-shirt, my first thought was more along the line of "I don't have time to bother with homework" rather than "I'm not capable of doing my own homework". The ad copy for the T-shirt follows this same reasoning as well, implying that girls don't have time to do homework when there is a new Justin Beiber album to listen to. I didn't get the message of "I'm not smart enough to do homework" at all, just "I'm too important to do it". We can bemoan the perpetuation of this idea in our society, but when you watch a show like "Toddlers and Tiara's", it's very easy to see how it continues to be perpetuated and how some girls learn to believe they ARE more important than other people (even their own parents) at a very early age based solely on their looks. As for J.C. Penney, the shirt was never offered in stores at all, only online. They were smart enough to respond to customer complaints, admit the message on the shirt was a mistake and discontinued sales of the shirt immediately. I give them credit for being responsible enough to admit it was a mistake and take the steps to correct that mistake as quickly as possible.
As a mom of 2 girls, I'm also pretty resistant to buying clothes with anything written across the chest or the tush. "Izod" is one thing, so are "METS" (or "Yankees" if you insist.) But the rest, should they appear in the form of hand-me-downs, are pajamas. So, no, my girls don't wear "Juicy" across their tushs, nor do they have their homework policy emblazoned across their chests. It always surprises me when I see adult women (much less kids) who find this particular style attractive. As to the actual text on the T shirt, it proclaims: "I'm too pretty to do homework so my brother has to do it for me." The reason the brother is expected to do the homework is because of the self-proclaimed prettiness of the wearer, not her active social life. Not the message I want to send my daughters, on so many levels. Not the end of the world, and not enough to keep me from shopping at JCPenney, simply something I would pass by on the rack, right along with those "Juicy" T shirts.
This reminds me of the one time when my oldest (then in middle school) left the house with dirty clothes. I was so tired of this so we stopped at the nearest store and I proceeded to pick out the cheapest shirt I could find. It so happened the t-shirt read, "I (heart) homework." You would have thought I was killing my child but I made him wear it. :lol: Of course, I never could make anyone in the house wear that particular shirt ever again but it served as a great reminder that when we leave our house, we look presentable. :thumb:
THANK YOU for saying what you interpreted that message to be because I also thought it meant "Pretty=too many other things going on in my world to do mundane chores like homework....NOT that pretty=dumb. And I'm a female!
I didn't think it means dumb, but it does imply that a girl just has to be pretty; everything else is secondary (or not even on the radar).
Well! I would question who ever the brains in their marketing department that allowed it to go through. Somehow things that associate with being pretty, beautiful, etc, can be taken to a level that ugliness can never go. What if the shirt said... "I'm so ugly that I have to do my homework and my brother's too!" Of course nobody in their right mind would even print such a shirt because no ugly person would wear it, BUT a pretty person would wear it JUST TO GET ATTENTION! Rebel1
I had a student last year who said she was too pretty to do homework! She believed it too. Not sure where she got that idea though. She was "ok" looking. But she wore such skanky clothing that her body covered any defects her face may have had. She literally told me (and really seemed to believe) that it did not matter what grades she got since "this" (as she waved her hands up and down her body) would get her whatever she wanted in life. My former neighbor has some daughters that were not that bright in grade school. They were off the charts beautiful though. She, the neighbor, would tell them and anyone around that they were dumb as stumps but beautiful enough to land a rich guy. She would also tell them it was "better to cheat than repeat." Mom said that she was training them up to be pretty and sexy enough to nab the rich, successful guy who was already established and had a home of his own. I said those guys are usually married by that time. She said she knew, but it was the younger, prettier girls that get them when they have money and keep them until they die. Yikes! unfortunately puberty was not kind to those girls. School is still a huge struggle for the younger one and the older's fiance barely makes ends meet. Beauty fades long before brains do.
I think it's really stupid and I would never buy it, but it's also not worth making a fuss over. Who cares if someone else wants to wear it?
We still see gender gaps in math and science, and these gaps are cultural/societal--there is absolutely no research supporting the gaps based on development or ability. There is a lot of research showing that girls' sense of ability, their self-efficacy, and their interest in math and science is still being skewed at early ages. This is a problem. "Cute" " harmless" things like the tees help perpetuate ridiculous stereotypes that can and DO undermine girls' achievement.
