Fashion statement sends a hurtful message
Posted on Thursday, Jan 29, 2004From Seattle P.I.
Fashion statement sends a hurtful message
By SUSAN PAYNTER
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST
Robin Schwartz happily breezed through the air of rummage sale chic and kitschy cool inside Seattle’s Urban Outfitters store on Broadway last week, smiling when she saw the “Everybody Loves Irish Girls” T-shirts embellished with shamrocks.
But the next shirt stopped her cold.
Robin’s mom is Irish Catholic. Her dad is Jewish. So a blue “Everybody Loves Jewish Girls” tee posed a cute possibility, too — that is, until the 27-year-old caught the significance of the decorations. All around the slogan were dollar signs and little purses.
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So, Irish girls love shamrocks. Jewish girls love money?
The stereotype stung to the point that Schwartz turned and left the store, tears welling.
Too thin-skinned for a store known for “Jugtown Pennsylvania” and “French Lick Indiana” trash tank tops and tees bragging about “Bitches”?
Robin’s dad didn’t think so. Neither do I. There is a line — and this shirt crosses it — between a shamrock, or even the brimming beer steins on the “Everybody Loves German Girls” shirt (in questionable brown) and symbols that evoke a haunting history of blame for greed and avarice.
“I’m not someone to cry ‘anti-Semitism’ at every turn,” said Schwartz, who describes himself as a “lapsed Jew,” not closely connected to the Jewish community. “I wouldn’t, for example, complain about a virulent anti-Israel slogan on a shirt. That sentiment would be political and protected (speech).”
Schwartz doesn’t even think that Urban Outfitters is intentionally trying to hurt a Jewish girl’s feelings. But, whether intentional or not, he thinks the cheery little blue tees tell shoppers it’s OK, even fun, to perpetuate the idea that Jews are all about money.
“And tolerance of intolerance is a slippery slope,” Schwartz said with a wary eye on the recent resurgence of anti-Jewish feelings in Europe.
Schwartz went to see the shirts for himself, politely suggesting to the sales clerk that the tees were offensive and ought to be removed. Something like that would be up to corporate headquarters in Philadelphia, he was told. It was obvious that the clerk didn’t grasp what he was talking about, anyway.
I got the same blank stare from a friendly clerk when I hit the store on Monday. “Well, the Irish shirts have shamrocks. The Jewish shirts have dollar signs,” she patiently explained, saying she figures they’re about the same.
“Would your daughter know the difference? Would she get the insult?” I asked Shelley Leavitt, the mom of a 14-year-old Jewish teen named Rachel Leavitt-Baron, whom I know.
“I hope she would,” Leavitt said, saying she was shocked by the shirts.
Not being the mom of a daughter and not being Jewish, I asked around among some of the Jewish moms of girls I know and all saw the shirts as an insult.
“My first reaction is, my gosh, are people still stereotyping like that?” Leavitt said. Of course, she knows some are — hopefully in private. But selling it on a shirt legitimizes and desensitizes. “I can imagine some kids might say, ‘Well, aren’t most Jewish kids rich and don’t they like to shop? What’s wrong with that?’,” Leavitt said.
For her and other parents of teenage girls this marks just one more hurdle on a landscape already littered with arguments over too-tight, too-short styles that scream, “Come and get me! I just left my self-respect on the dressing room floor.” Whatever the message Urban Outfitters founder and president Richard Hayne is really sending, it’s ringing a cheerful tune at the cash register.
Last year, when many retailers closed, Urban Outfitters opened 13 new stores and posted a $423 million company record in sales, according to Philadelphia Weekly. Enough, at least, for Hayne to give $13,150 to the re-election campaign of Republican Sen. Rick Santorum who recently equated gay sex with incest and bestiality.
But, although free-speech tees have a history worth defending, that freedom sometimes comes at a cost. A Michigan State University fraternity was virtually closed down in 2002 after pledges wore gay-bashing messages similar to Santorum’s sentiments.
The “Everybody Loves Jewish Girls” tee with its happy dollar signs is more subtle. But the insult is unmistakable. How long do you figure an “Everybody Loves African American Girls” shirt decorated with derogatory symbols would stay on the shelf?