Recently JCPenney took the above shirt off of their shelves after parent complaints that it fed into the stereotype that young girls should be more worried about their looks rather than focusing on their education. My husband was the one to actually see this article and point it out to me. Now that we have a daughter our radars beep whenever something like this arises. JCPenney was also marketing a shirt that read, "I'm too pretty to do Math." Again this fed the stereotype that girls were not as good as boys in Mathematics.
We brought this article to school and it sparked some anger in most of the teachers that we work with and I decided to address it in class. Today in class the students wrote about their morning routine and then they re-wrote it as the opposite gender. This writing exercise reveals many gender stereotypes. (examples: boys smell bad, girls take too long to pick clothes, boys are not sensitive, girls gossip, boys eat a lot, girls text all the time, etc.) We then listed these stereotypes on large post it notes and will save them to use next week.
Next week we are going to read the article about JcPenney and their t-shirt issue (http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/parenting/epic-t-shirt-fail-quot-im-too-pretty-to-do-my-homework-so-my-brother-has-to-do-it-for-me-quot-2537106/) and ask the question, "Does pretty have anything to do with it?" We'll also look at how media affects our opinions and reinforces many stereotypes about gender, age, religion, cultural background, etc. Additionally we'll explore the Pink vs. Blue world that begins at birth and discuss whether or not toys can affect a child as he or she is growing.
This is a hot topic and the students are really interested in discussing it. If you get a chance talk to them about it at home!
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