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Thursday, August 20, 2009

Hollister Continues Sexualization of Teens

We've seen things like this before. But it's always shocking to see new t-shirts released with sexually explicit phrases on them. And some of these new Hollister ones take the cake:


Who wouldn't want to wear a sexually explicit message over their breasts?

I find all of these t-shirts offensive ("Girls just wanna have sun" is not as bad as the others though, but still...). Sexually explicit messages on t-shirts are just another way to further objectify women, and young women and teenagers at that.

According to Jezebel, Hollister calls these shirts "hot and funny."

I don't really see what's funny about "Legal-ish", "I [Heart] The Woody", and "The twins are quite a handful". Using a phrase like "Legal-ish" encourages the sexualization of teenagers
through corporate male fantasies.

Hollister is marketed towards young teenagers. I do not think it is appropriate to market these sexually explicit shirts to teenagers. I think it's fine for teens to express their sexuality, but not through "corporate male fantasies." Because that's what these shirts are. They are not about teens expressing their sexuality in a responsible way. They are about corporations promoting the over sexualization of teenagers for their own purposes.

2 comments:

Ashley said...

My boyfriend was looking over my shoulder as I read this post (he's a junior high teacher) and he said, horrified, "Oh my god. My students are going to be wearing those." And he's right. It isn't good, these shirts, and what they advertize.

shane said...

I wrote to Hollister and told them I found the shirts disgusting and inappropriate for your target demographic. I told them it is dangerous to play with the language of statutory rape.

Here is Hollister's response:
"Thanks for emailing us at Hollister about our humor tees.
Our intention with our marketing is to be fun and casual-we're sorry you didn't see it this way."

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