“Math class is tough… Party dresses are fun!” A Barbie doll released in 1992 caused a recall-worthy controversy with its inclusion of phrases talking about the difficulty of math and many more about the wonders of shopping in its collection of audio files.
In the decades since, women’s rights organizations have worked to change the public’s perceptions of girls’ abilities and interests, to get more girls involved in high-level math and sciences and to empower young girls to pursue higher education. And if you look at the numbers, it seems to be succeeding: more women than men are graduating college (according to the American Council on Education, the ratio has been around 57:43 for at least 12 years) and women’s doctorate completion in math and science has grown slightly (the National Science Foundation says that 30 percent of doctorate recipients in science are women).
However, if you move past the numbers and look at the social climate around school-aged girls today, you may come to a very different conclusion about progress in the last 20 years.
Just last month, controversy exploded around the mega-chain/department store J.C. Penney and its clothes for young girls. Marketed for girls aged seven to 16, a tee-shirt that reads “I’m too pretty to do homework so my brother does it for me” in flowery, girlish text, got recalled when a onslaught of media attention turned to the disturbing message for girls on the clothes. The equally denigrating description for the product read: “Who has time for homework when there’s a new Justin Bieber album out? She’ll love this tee that’s just as cute and sassy as she is.” Soon after, the store pulled another shirt that said that the wearer’s favorite subjects were puppies and shopping.
Clearly, the ideas on these shirts are entirely unsuitable for young girls. They promote negative labels feminism has fought for years, and they teach girls that you can’t be feminine and be intelligent or intellectually minded. But they have deeper problems than just the pure unacceptability of the shirts themselves.
One of the reasons that these shirts are so absolutely offensive is that you would never in this country see the same message emblazoned on a boy’s tee. And while the theme is completely inappropriate for either sex, it is the huge disparity in the messages that society offers to boys and girls that makes it particularly horrifying.
In a society where young girls face irrational media expectations every day about how to behave, look and speak, the last thing these girls need is yet another source telling them that being smart and pretty are mutually exclusive and that they should choose vapid, stereotypical activities over education.
However, it’s not J.C. Penney that should be demonized over this controversy. While their shirts for girls promote an awful ethos, the store is hardly the sole culprit in the promotion of a culture of low intellectual expectations for young girls. Between the barrage of negative messages from the media and from basically every other mainstream information source, you almost can’t blame J.C. Penney for thinking that reducing girls to a stereotype in shirt form would be a commercial success. After all, most companies in America who produce goods for young girls—from toy companies that sell talking baby dolls and, thereby, uphold the women’s role as that of a mother, to baby goods stores that sell pink and blue furniture for different genders—reiterate stereotypes about girls and about what these girls are expected to do and be. And since consumers are clearly buying these goods, the ultimate blame lies with the culture that we have created for ourselves.
Beyond the culture of it, J.C. Penny is not the only chain promoting these messages. Forever 21, too, released a math-themed shirt for girls that read “Allergic to Algebra,” though these shirts are intended for an older audience that can make its own decisions about what is and is not appropriate.
Still, even though it’s barely J.C. Penney’s fault for exploiting a negative culture around girls, the only real way to eliminate this culture is to call out companies that do so.
2011-11-22