My Girl Isn't Too Dumb For Homework

Okay, so I'm late coming to the table on this one given the Maternity Leave From Life rock I've been living under, but the JC Penny website this week released a girl's sweatshirt - apparently in honor of the back-to-school time of year - that said, "I'm too pretty to do homework so my brother has to do it for me."  Change.org circulated a petition demanding JC Penny remove the shirt from their site, and within hours enough people had signed it, that JC Penny removed the sweatshirt from their website.

It's not because I have a daughter that this sweatshirt pisses me off.

It pisses me off because it's one more sign of the sexist trend (or backlash from the feminist movement?) currently underfoot impacting girls, teenagers and young women.

Women have made amazing gains in the last fifty years. If you don't believe it, one episode of Mad Men will have you building an altar to Betty Friedan on your living room mantle by the first commercial break.  Girls now outperform boys in elementary, middle, and high schools. The top one-third of graduating high school classes are women - and their male counterparts now need affirmative action to get into college otherwise the incoming freshmen classes would be 75% female. (And while we're ranting - isn't it funny that affirmative action is no longer controversial or a big deal when white men need it for college? Has JC Penny considered a sweatshirt for teenage boys that says, "Affirmative Action. Don't leave for college without it"?) Women now outperform men in employment in urban areas for the first time in history.

Yet from the time they are infants and toddlers in pink princess outfits, butterfly wings, and bedazzled Mary Janes, they are being taught that what their mind is capable of matters some, but their appearance is the primary concern. I'm not suggesting that women and girls shouldn't focus on their appearance at all - we all like nice clothes and shoes, as does my husband and most men I know - but our appearance shouldn't come at the expense of our intelligence.

JC Penny isn't the only one at fault or the only ones sending the message to girls that if you look good, your mind doesn't matter. Indeed, it comes from all levels of life, from Disney and the American Girl doll to candidates for office and the world within the television set - even the previously innocent Sesame Street has been prettified and princessed. In her campaign for Vice-President, Sarah Palin's make-up artist was the highest paid person on her staff. Who better to send the message that you can say any idiotic thing you want, as long as you look good? But it didn't take Sarah Palin to convey this message. At a party a few years ago, I met a friend's daughter who had just graduated from high school. I asked her what she wanted to do for a career. She said she didn't care what she did -as long as she could wear stilettos.

I wanted an anti-depressant after she said this. In a world and life where you could do anything, why would you just focus on your shoes? 


Needless to say, I won't be shopping for my children at JC Penny - not that I shop there anyway. Nor do I shop at Forever 21 after their magnet that said, "I'm too pretty to do math." (and because I'm not 21). But such things have me sigh a deep sigh, and wonder what lays ahead for me as I attempt to raise feminist or non-sexist thinking children in a sexist dumbed-down world.


Recommend Reading for this and the related Princess trend that has contaminated girls across the land?
Lisa Bloom's Think: Straight Talk for Women to Stay Smart in a Dumbed Down World and Peggy Orensteins' Cinderella Ate My Daughter.

Peggy Orenstein was recommended to me by a friend and mother of two daughters. I haven't read it yet, as I'm waiting for it from the library. I've read Bloom's Think. I can't say it's the best writing, but she makes some excellent points and she's done her research.