JCPenney's 'Too Pretty For Homework' Shirt Is A Steal At $9.99 [UPDATED]
LatestJust in time for back-to-school, JCPenney is selling a girls’ shirt emblazoned with the slogan, “I’m too pretty to do HOMEWORK, so my brother has to do it for me.” Isn’t that a nice, positive message to send to girls aged 7-16? (And on sale, no less — destroying your daughter’s self-esteem previously set you back $16.99!) In case your little lady-brain can’t quite fathom the point, the page itself is titled “Girls 7-16 Too Pretty to do Homework” and the product description asks, “Who has time for homework when there’s a new Justin Bieber album out?”
Perhaps not since the launch of Teen Talk Barbie (“Math class is tough!”) have we seen a mass retailer market a product to girls that so explicitly associates intelligence with being a boy, and looking pretty with being a girl. Perhaps worst of all, the graphical elements of the t-shirt that seem to represent “homework” are all mathematical — fractions, and the equation 4 x 6, which is, apparently to girls, one big “?”. But why worry about homework when you can be pretty? School work — that’s boy stuff! Never mind the girls who like school, who derive a sense of accomplishment and self-esteem from acquiring and mastering new information and skills. They probably only have to do that because they aren’t pretty, the poor things.