Okay, so I know this is somewhat a little too feminist, but I can’t help but agree with this one.
My Strong Opinion
JCPenney Shirt is an epic fail
JC Penney has discontinued the sale of this merchandise. Their official statement reads:
J.C. Penney is committed to being America’s destination for great style and great value for the whole family. We agree that the ‘Too pretty’ t-shirt does not deliver an appropriate message, and we have immediately discontinued its sale. Our merchandise is intended to appeal to a broad customer base, not to offend them. We would like to apologize to our customers and are taking action to ensure that we continue to uphold the integrity of our merchandise that they have come to expect.
I am quite infuriated with this bland statement, so I’ve decided to just enumerate the reasons why.
- We agree that the ‘Too pretty’ t-shirt does not deliver an appropriate message… – If you agree, like ABSOFUCKINGLUTELY agree that is does not deliver an appropriate message, why was this approved in the first place? Why did it pass design and conceptualization? Production? Quality check? I bet it’s made of fantastic material, but the content? Really?! COME ON.
- Our merchandise is intended to appeal to a broad customer base, not to offend them. – So your broad customer base still includes young women thinking that they cannot do as well in academics as young men can? Your broad customer base still includes girls aged 7 to 16 years old who have the mindset that women cannot be both pretty and smart? Your broad customer base still includes young women that does not see the likes of Natalie Portman, Julia Stiles, Rashida Jones, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Jodie Foster as iconic women who are stunningly beautiful and from Ivy League schools?
- We would like to apologize to our customers and are taking action to ensure that we continue to uphold the integrity of our merchandise that they have come to expect. – I think by now what consumers have come to expect, especially after the Barbie fail in 1994, is the fact that the playing field is even for men and women. The consumers have come to expect that purchased clothing is to boost their self-esteem, reaffirm their self-worth and NOT question their ability and their potential.
This is so disappointing. And frustrating.
And I seriously hope they do something about the purchases of this item of clothing. My nieces Myah, Madison and Lily are all in New Jersey and I’d be stumped if one day they saw someone wear that ugly piece of crap. I do not want anything that will make them think that they are less capable and that the boys can just do all the work.
I am part of 1%
This just made me laugh out loud. Literally. So yeah, reblog if you’re part of the 1%.
(Random blogs pop out each time there’s a storm on a long weekend.)
Teens and social networking
It’s no question: this is the techie era. Should your kid not know about Facebook or how to navigate the computer with a mouse, automatically that kid is shunned. It’s not a surprise. My nephews can even tell me which browser — Mozilla? Chrome? Safari? — can their applications run better. Somehow it scares me that kids know that much.
Looking back though, I can’t really be that scared. After all, I was quick to jump the bandwagon when social networking sites started popping up. Friendster, MySpace, Hi5, Multiply were more popular in my day. I’ve also resided (as in blogged) thru LiveJournal before moving here. When Facebook and Twitter came, the first three were almost immediately dropped.
I’ve always regarded my networking page to be my personal space, so everyone who attempts to attack me thru my wall/comments immediately gets a hacking of a lifetime. I am THAT protective of my content online, so I naturally assumed that the kids today are quite protective too. But this article caught my attention while doing my daily Yahoo! run.
10 things you don’t know about teens and social networking
Here are some items that completely bothered me:
“I feel safer online than I do offline. So I do things online that I wouldn’t do in real life.” –Sadie, 14 years old
“Social networking affects all the things you do in real life now. Like, if you go to a party, one of the most important aspects of going to the party is to document yourself for online posts. You have to prove you were looking good, you were having fun, and that you were actually there! It’s not about the party anymore but about the pictures of the party.” –Caroline, 14 years old
“My friendships are really affected by social networking. You have to constantly validate your friends online. And everyone’s like ‘Where were you?’ ‘What have you been doing?’ ‘Why haven’t you commented on my picture yet?’ So you have to be online all the time, just to keep track, so you don’t upset anyone.” –Jasmine, 13 years old
First and foremost, A FOURTEEN YEAR OLD PARTIES!? When I was fourteen, I was reading Little Women! Are you shitting me?!
Secondly, I am not… as shocked. I remember my cousin Bianca a few years back. She was not eating much then and I always asked her why (there was a time when I lived with them in Antipolo, Rizal). I’m the pusher you see; I push food down her throat and make her eat as much as she can because to me, she looked quite frail. Then she said, “I don’t want to be fat.” So I asked her where that came from. She promptly replied, “There’s a fat girl in class and they always tease her, and even Ate May (another cousin), the boys (our boy cousins) tease her a lot.” No need to worry, she now has a bloated tummy and her older sister Marga is working on making her join sports to strengthen her torso.
I’m worried how my kids wil be when they discover social networking. I’m worried how my kids will react to the fact that I have been blogging since 2004… and profoundly cursing since. I’m worried that I might be embarrassed and ashamed and be called irresponsible, only because I chose to chronicle my life in a way that other people can see it. So in a way, I’m worried that I’m not far off from being 14.
Marga refuses to let Chuchi face the TV screen. She has resorted to the traditional learning tools: books (both chewable and readable), building blocks, playing mat, rattles, squishy toys and the like. I have a feeling our little Chuchi will become a bookworm like her sexy foxy aunt (EHEM). My hopes to have my other nieces and nephews (all in NJ) to fall in love with books and reading and creating their own adventures will always be high. Their parents have been constantly urging me to go there and make them read, but sincerely, I don’t know if I can handle it when all hell breaks loose.
Social networking… can be good and bad at the same time. We have to constantly play close attention to the kids, without making them feel that we’ve stifled their freedom of expression (God knows how much information kids get from Google nowadays). Just make sure that they don’t cross the line between being friendly and attracting pedophiles. These sites can break a person’s self-esteem as easily as it can build them. So keep a close eye.
I know I did. Still am, always will. And they’re not even my kids. :)
Source:
Yahoo!
You do not have a bad life.
With all the weird and awful events that occured in the past couple of weeks, I cannot help but feel somewhat shaken. I’ve always believed in this institution, even if most of my peers have remained less than optimistic. I think it’s the fact that I bear witness to the lives it changed, specifically the people who used to work for it, but with the strings rapidly unraveling the cloth, I don’t know how long it would take for this institution to regain its reputation.
But it kind of made me reevaluate my days. For the past three weeks, I have been working till 8 in the evening. I think there were only a handful of instances that I left early to run or hit the gym, but after that, I always came back to finish a page or two. And for a moment, actually for a week, I thought my life was awful.
It was very much like those first world pains that people (at least from Twitter) often joke about, like complaining about having too much food for lunch and now you’re tired. Or having to tilt the Pringles container because your hand is too big to fit in and you can’t get the chips.
So when I stumbled upon this pin from Pinterest, I was really slapped across the face. Then I read about Somalia, so I finished every morsel of my packed lunch. A little after that, I heard about the passing of an officemate, so I went to see a few faces I have not seen for a very long time.
That’s our fault; we complain too much. The moment comfort is denied, or even just diminished, it is already a complete injustice to the way we live. And that is not even an exaggeration.
Paulo Coehlo said “Everyday, God gives us a moment to change everything that makes us unhappy. Use it.”
You do not have a bad life. If your test script failed, it only means it needs tweaking. If the microwave is broken, it means you can digest your food even if it is cold. If it rained on your way to the parking lot, it means you haven’t ran for days.
You do not have a bad life. You’re just having a bad day. And acknowledging that would make all the difference in the world.
Keep ya head up.
the salt of your skin 