OK, when I was a kid I thought girls were the spawn of Satan. While I didn't invent the "He-Man Woman Hater's Club", I always felt like a charter member. It's a common stage that most boys go through, and most of us grow up to realize that girls can be, well, kinda fun, really. After all, how much time do most males spend trying to figure out ways to separate women from their clothes? Those that don't get over it end up watching "Will & Grace", and that's OK, too- just as long as everyone is happy with themselves.
I can't speak for girls (never having been one, of course), but I would imagine that they go through a similar stage. Even so, do they really need to advertise?
NEW YORK -- The T-shirts and pajamas are meant to be funny, with cartoon captions like "Boys Are Stupid, Throw Rocks At Them." But some protesters, encouraged by a fathers-rights talk show host, are unamused and have pressured three retail chains into dropping the merchandise.
The products in question -- an array of girls' clothes and accessories -- are manufactured or licensed by David & Goliath, a T-shirt company based in Clearwater, Fla.
Its chief designer, Todd Goldman, has created a series of cartoonish graphics used on the merchandise with what he intended to be humorously anti-boy themes. "Boys Are Smelly -- Throw Garbage Cans At Them," says one. "The Stupid Factory -- Where Boys Are Made," says another.
"I have a very quirky, sarcastic sense of humor," Goldman said. "Most people just love the cartoons. If a few people don't like them, they don't have to buy them."
The graphics have been in use more than two years, but only recently came to the attention of Glenn Sacks, a commentator who hosts His Side, a weekly radio show aired in Los Angeles and Seattle that is sympathetic to the fathers' rights movement and often at odds with feminists.
At Sacks' urging, listeners and supporters have contacted targeted retailers, urging them to stop selling the David & Goliath products. At least three retail chains, Seattle-based Bon-Macy's, California-based Tilly's, and Claire's Stores Inc., an international chain, say they will no longer carry the contested items.
Bon-Macy's spokeswoman Kimberly Reason said about a dozen products ranging from boxer shorts to baseball caps were pulled from the chain's stores in five Western states because they displayed one of three captions: "Boys Are Stupid," "Boys Are Smelly," and "Boys Have Cooties."
Yes, I understand that this apparel line is designed to be humorous, but let's consider one argument here. What if these shirts and hats said things like "Negroes Are Stupid", or "Jews Are Smelly", or even "Hispanics Have Cooties"? The hue and cry would be audible from coast to coast- and justifiably so. We as a society would never put up with this sort of for-profit ethnically-based denigration of an entire group. Why, then, are we willing to accept the same when it comes to boys? Why is it any more correct to gratuitously insult boys than Jews, Negroes, or Hispanics? Why would we even for a moment consider allowing our children to wear clothing bearing these slogans?
Personally, I find the message sent by this line of apparel to be gratuitously insulting and mean-spirited, but that is not the reason for my anger. No, I'm angry that we are teaching girls that harboring, espousing, and WEARING these sentiments is OK. Prejudice is prejudice; is this REALLY the message we want our children to be getting? That it's perfectly acceptable to be mean to an entire group?
I suppose that on some level there is a free-speech issue involved here for Todd Goldman. Yes, he DOES have the right to sell his products. We as parents, however, have not only the right but the responsibility to prevent our children from buying them and- even worse- WEARING them. Until we begin to teach our children that prejudice, of whatever flavor, is wrong, we as a society will never be able to move forward. Is that the world we want? Speaking for myself and myself alone, it's certainly not what I want.
