Talking T-Shirts

I have become a connoisseur of children’s clothing in the past four years since becoming pregnant with my first child. I used to love shopping for clothes for myself, probably because I attended Catholic school through eighth grade and was stuck in a blue polyester plaid uniform and knee socks for way too long. But now I spend much less effort (everything is either gray or black so it all matches when I’m in a hurry) and money (hello, Old Navy) on my own clothes in comparison to what I buy for my daughter and son, who at 3 ½ and 15 months are growing out of their outfits pretty quickly these days. 

Finding stuff I like for my daughter is pretty easy, but I’m finding that it’s harder to buy things for my boy. Boy’s clothes seem much more likely to succumb to the cheesy slogan school of design. Every t-shirt seems to say something like “Mommy’s lil’ superstar” or “Just Monkeyin’ around” or “I get my HANDSOME from my dad.” Of course the girls’ clothes go there, too, with clunkers like “Most Valuable Princess” or this one featuring a squirrel and the groan-worthy script “Nuts about Daddy.”

While those shirts aren’t my taste, they certainly aren’t offensive. But JC Penney found itself in the middle of a white cotton kerfuffle last week when a girls’ long-sleeved shirt sporting the slogan “I'm too pretty to do my homework so my brother has to do it for me” was spotted on its website. You can see where this story is going: The news went viral and parents all around registered varying levels of outrage. Long story short, the company realized it had made a mistake in judgment, removed the shirt from its site and apologized to its customers.

I find the whole thing kind of silly. No, I wouldn’t let my daughter wear a shirt like that. But I can’t imagine any girl really wanting to wear that shirt anyway, even if deep down inside she feared that being smart was going to make her stand out in a bad way. One story I saw pointed out that the shirt was marked down in a clearance sale, so that tells me it wasn’t a wildly popular choice in the first place.

In general, I avoid nearly every item of kids’ clothing with any kind of slogan on it not just because many of them are cheesy, but because neither of my kids can read yet and they don’t choose their own clothes and have no idea what they are walking around espousing.