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Forever 21 improves girls' self-esteem with "I'm allergic to algebra" shirt
By Kelly BourdetSeptember 12th, 2011, 10:36 amComments (13)
Following in JC Penney's footsteps, everyone's favorite "fashion" retailer, Forever 21, may find itself embroiled in its own T-shirt message controversy. JC Penney's message, which was eventually pulled from shelves, centered on the power of female beauty to preclude one from needing a brain: "I'm too pretty to do my homework so my brother does it for me." Forever 21 put it this way: "I'm allergic to algebra."
I don't understand this trend of selling tongue-in-cheek anti-intellectualism to our young women in the form of jokey, cutesy fashion. It's the garment equivalent to pretending like you don't understand a math problem so the cute boy in class will explain it to you. Plenty of girls like math and are good at it, but when society presents the message that our femininity is related to our mathematical deficit, plenty of girls are going to pretend that they're not. Remember all those cheesy "Girl Power!" emblazoned accessories from the '90s? Let's bring those back.
Commentarium (13 Comments)
Were a generation raised on Spice Girls better off than a generation raised on Gaga?
Makes you wonder.
Of course, that's from the perspective of a generation raised on Joni Mitchell, Patti Smith and Ricki Lee Jones.
no one was "raised" on spice girls or gaga. how stupid. If you were "raised" on music then sucks for you. If we were raised on anything, it would be the internet, which encompasses everything.
thats like saying raised on Madonna or Guns and Roses. Yea right. so delusional
I hope shirts like this really take off... that way women will cease to be in my engineering classes entirely!
I think you should move to Saudi Arabia.
I'm pretty sure Ryan was being ironic. Most engineering classes already have very few women. This is the least attractive feature of studying engineering, in the eyes of most of the male students. Back in the 70s when I did an applied math class that was mostly engineers, there were 3 women in a class of 90!
PS two of them were lesbian bikers with permanent grease under their fingernails.
Tp: That might be comment of the day.
I hope the women in my engineering classes "really take off" off their shirts.
@BenReininga - Tp's comment would go over well in Saudi; the Saudis have no sense of humor, after all.
Women who don't learn math will be Forever 21, in the sense that they'll be forever stuck in the kind of low-level menial jobs that most 21-year-olds have.
Women have fought for their recognition in not only being able to be pretty also smart. To display a shirt that says, which is what it is doing, that they are allergic to math, makes them look like dumb bimbos.....not smart enough to do math, and thus are "allergic" to it. Come on ladies, We are ALL smart and can be beautiful and smart.
After all, we want to be independent and a lack of education will surely not get us there.
It's a joke. Take it as such. More frightening would be a generation of women that do not have any humor on themselfes!
^He's allergic to spelling.
also, that shirt is hilarious. I would wear it and I am a guy. If I girl wore it, I would laugh with her about it. Sense of humor is right. Sebs got it except he can't spell