Sexy Tees!!!!!

Frontpage WaPo article today on the dilemmas posed for educators when teenagers show up on campus in tee shirts bearing suggestive slogans.

The article put me in mind of a visit I made a while back with a group of female state legislators to Young Women's Leadership Charter School in Chicago. As we were walking down the hall, a young woman passed us wearing a shirt with the slogan: "Men are Like Chocolate--the Richer, the Better." Every single female state legislator in the group did a double take. We all agreed the shirt was cute--if not necessarily completely in synch with the school's female empowerment goals.

I must admit, I'm a fan of the cheeky tee and have been known to sport one myself on occassion. But I do frequently see young girls in my neighborhood sporting shirts that can only make me think: "Your momma let you out of the house wearing that?!?!?!?" (A twelve year old wearing a t-shirt that says "Jail Bait" is just plain creepy.) I certainly don't envy the school administrator who has to confront this on a day to day basis.

The lines here for educators can certainly be tough. Cracking down on inappropriate tee shirt slogans is among my dad's myriad responsibilities as a principal. From my school days I mostly remember him cracking down on profanity and shirts promoting guns, tobacco, alcohol and illegal drugs--not today's cheeky tees. The most suggestive tee shirts I remember from high school were the old "co-ed naked" which were tame, albeit dopey. A particularly controversial incident arose when the women's cross country team made shirts sporting the slogan "I may be just a pile of dookey, but dookey gets tougher in time." They were not happy when my dad asked them to cover the word "dookey" with duct tape. And I am not making this up.