In another universe there is a Jenni very similar to me. She's wearing slightly different clothes because in that universe Lee didn't buy her a breast cancer awareness tshirt for Valentines Day. He bought her a Terry's chocolate orange (milk) and a teddy bear (pink). She's probably wearing a different tshirt. Maybe she got one of those oh-so-offensive "Boys are stupid, throw rocks at them" David and Goliath ones.
She's blogging about something worthwhile and interesting.
You should go read her blog. (Or you could get the you that exists in the other universe to read her blog.)
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Here's why I think it's stupid that Farmers had to stop selling the tees that said "Boys are stupid throw rocks at them". My reasons are doublefold:
1. No one (as far as I was aware) was in any danger from the tshirts. Sure, it might not be a helpful thing to have printed on a tshirt, but what tshirt is actually helpful???
Maybe the Te Papa guides tshirts because then you can see where they are. But really, mostly people wear silly things on tshirts and it doesn't mean a thing. No one was *actually* taking the advice of a tshirt and throwing rocks at boys right?
hmmm. Am now tempted to start taking advice from tshirts.
2. There are heaps worse tshirts out there. The reason there was a big kerfuffle was that for once the message was oppressive to males. (I know this is going to be hard for some people to read, but bear with it. Remember no one is forcing you to agree with me.)
For years now you have been able to buy tshirts with the playboy logo on them. Men and women wear them. What is the message of that Hugh Hefner bunny? That women are sex objects. That symbol is everywhere, including being worn by girls under the legal age of consent. That is oppressive to women because it's saying that all women want to be treated as sexual objects.
For a few years now you have also been able to buy tshirts that have sexual positions printed on them...they say things like "porn star" and show two people (in the manner of the figures that mean men and women on public toilets) in all sorts of positions. This offends me because it shows that that kind of image is acceptable anywhere.
Why should that offend me? Because it means that in order for pornography to remain "naughty" it has to get more hard core. That's why I am unhappy that women's naked butts are in prime time tv. Why increasingly naked women are used to advertise anything at all.
It's a scale right? If it's OK to look at naked butts then porn has to go that step further for it to *be* porn. It has to go into extreme places. If it's OK to show a movie featuring explicit rape scenes, what do you put in a porn movie to make it dirtier or more obscene?
Hmmm. I'll stop the ranting.
Boys aren't that delicate. They can take a joke. Boys are stupid. Throw rocks at them. At least the tshirts aren't showing a naked boy being sexually dominated. That would (in my humble opinion) be much more harmful. The David and Goliath tshirts are clearly meant as a joke. Many more offensive tshirts are not.
Posted by jenni at June 3, 2004 03:21 PM