Wednesday, August 31, 2011

I'm Too Pretty To Clean Windows



Wanna do them for me? In fact, I'm too pretty to do anything whatsoever. Certainly I'm too pretty to write a crummy blog! Get me my limousine and my fuck-me-now shoes! Oops, forgot about that snake tail.

All this was provoked by the news that JC Penney canceled the sales of this t-shirt, after complaints, I surmise:




Good for JC Penney.

Not so good for me, because writing about these jokey t-shirts is like taking a refreshing acid bath for us feminazis. We get called for not having any sense of humor and for not discussing the killing of women in other countries and so on.

And of course I get the joke in the t-shirt, of course. I also get the base from which that joke has grown, like mildew, and it's that base I criticize. Here the base is the view that women don't need to be smart or to work hard if they are pretty. Prettiness suffices! Prettiness is a meal-ticket for life, and if you are pretty enough, men will do the work for you.

And that's what the laughter is about, as well as about the fact that the idea is wrong. Prettiness will not take you through life. The final point, and probably the only point for the hypothetical wearer of these t-shirts is that pretty women have it easier in life than women who are not judged pretty.

The reason why JC Penney was correct in canceling the t-shirts is, in the immediate sense, something more important than any of that. It's the anti-education message in the t-shirt. Just as women have become the majority in colleges and universities, a t-shirt suggests that they should put the brakes on.

Probably just a coincidence.
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Added later: It's not the joke I discuss here as much as why it would be treated AS a joke. Direct gender reversals (as an explanatory aid) don't work here because the history differs between the two genders. But consider "I'm too Muscular To Do Homework" for a t-shirt for boys.