When my daughter was in kindergarten, her favorite shirt said, “Girls rule.”

At the time, I liked the whole Girl Power rage, was charmed by the confidence and self-reliance it seemed to promote. Now that we’re shopping in the junior department, the slogans seem to have crossed from confidence to arrogance and from cute to cruel.

You’d be cooler if you were me.

It’s all about me. Deal with it.

Some might snicker and say I’m showing my age, or call me a hypocrite since those two sample sayings came straight from shirts in my own daughter’s closet. But there’s something about these types of slogans that’s been nagging at me and I didn’t realize until recently just what it was.

It’s that along with their t-shirts, I want to give them a sign.

Comedian Bill Engvall is probably best known for his “Here’s your sign” routine where he proposes hanging signs around the necks of stupid people to give others fair warning that the sign-wearer is especially clueless. 

For example, after Engvall took a friend fishing, they stepped from the boat carrying two full stringers of bass. A man standing there asked, “Hey, did y’all catch all them fish?” To which Engvall replied, “No. We talked them into giving up. Here’s your sign.”

Or when Engvall was moving—his house and yard full of boxes and a U-Haul parked in the driveway—a neighbor walked up and asked, “You moving?” Envall said, “Nope. We just pack our stuff up once or twice a week just to see how many boxes it takes. Here’s your sign.”

So when I’m out somewhere and I see a teenage girl or woman wearing a shirt that reads, “No Money, No Honey,” or “You’re ugly and that’s sad,” I envision adding an Engvall-type sign that says, “Hi! I’m superficial!”

And to the guys who wear shirts with sayings like, “No fat chicks,” “I lie to women,” or “I make girls cry,” I’d like to say, “Thanks for the warning. Along with your Stupid sign comes a free ‘I’m a jerk!’ forehead tattoo.”

Whatever happened to trying to make a good first impression?

The strange thing is, I adore funny shirts. They’re a great way to break the ice and to get total strangers to talk. But the ruthlessness of some of these demeaning sayings crosses a line, as do those with unabashedly arrogant slogans. Wearing an obnoxious saying emblazoned across your chest is much like running about, waving your arms over your head while yelling, “Look at me! Look at me!” without actually speaking. It’s a synopsis of who you are or what you believe.

I wonder if these types of shirts are appealing to some because they believe it shows strength—an ability to accept or reject whomever they please—or they think it says they’re so cool they can flaunt convention (and class). Or maybe they actually take pride in being offensive, believing it’s either part of the current culture or even the theme of their generation.

Or maybe they just don’t know any better. Tsk-tsk. The poor dears.

So yeah. I know. Maybe I’m showing my age. Is that such a bad thing? With age comes the right to be eccentric.

 Something I’ve looked forward to all of my life.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 27th, 2007 at 10:29 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.