by Imran Siddiquee
Kayla alerted us on Twitter to this sexist and unfunny t-shirt being sold at a Walmart in Vandalia, IL:
The sentiment in the words here – that women belong in the kitchen – is an extremely retro one, but one which the t-shirt is attempting to make modern through the use of “irony.” The idea being that of course they don’t actually think all women should make men sandwiches whenever they ask them to, or that all men actually have the inherent power to order women around, or even that all women talk too much and need to be put in their place – they just find it funny that people once thought this way.
Or something like that.
I would simply refer anyone trying to make that argument to this recent New York Magazine post on “Hipster sexism”:
“have we really reached this stage of enlightened irony? We think we’re over sexism yet our ironic expressions of it can only reinforce the basic problem, which is that women are paid less and (degradingly) sexualized against their will far more than men.” – Alissa Quart
It’s especially problematic to justify misogyny on a t-shirt like this by calling it “ironic,” because any person who is wearing it in public is openly endorsing the underlying demeaning sentiment, whether or not they mean to. It doesn’t matter if you aren’t actually a misogynist in your everyday life, because when you put on a t-shirt like this you are promoting misogynistic ideas to the people around you. Same thing applies to a retailer which decides to carry and display this kind of shirt.
I decided to call the Walmart store and ask about the shirt myself. After confirming that this picture was indeed taken at their location, I asked the very nice woman on the phone in Vandalia if decisions on t-shirts being sold in their store were made at that local level or by the national corporation. Her response:
“We don’t have any say so on that, they send it in.”
Which means Walmart itself, the American multinational retailer corporation, is responsible for this t-shirt making its way to Vandalia. This particular shirt is not available on Walmart.com, but my guess is Illinois isn’t the only state where you can find it. If you’ve seen it at your local store, let us know in the comments!
And in the meantime, let’s inform the world’s largest retailer that as long as they continue to sell sexism like this, we won’t be giving them our money:
Imran is the Social Media and Communications Manager at MissRepresentation.org. Follow him on Twitter @imransiddiquee
I don’t buy anything from WallMart anyway, but if I did, I wouldn’t just because of this. It’s inappropriate in these times. Of course, those chauvinistic, male-types, who are probably bordering on abusing their women, would buy them.
[...] am going to chalk this one up to a Halloween prank. Because certainly they cannot be serious. Share this:More Pin ItShare on [...]
Surely this teeshirt slogan is just code for ‘I’m a sad lost fuckwit who will surely never get a girlfriend and is doomed to die alone’?
Nice comment, Looks like somebody was commenting on a web page when they should of been making a sandwich i bet.
Hit a nerve, did she?
I’m very pro-women, and I am ashamed of my sex for the position we have historically put women in…women should NEVER be expected to be subservient, and I disagree quite strongly with the message on the shirt.
That being said, Walmart is all kinds of messed up for other reasons. Compared to their business practices, this is nothing. Also, they only carry merchandise that sells…if someone buys it, that’s their fault. I don’t feel like you can fault a corporation because they happen to carry a sexist shirt. Seriously, now? I’m sure you can go look through their books and find plenty on feminism, so I feel like this isn’t really news. It’s just..dumb.
So pro-woman he’s gonna tell women what we should be pissed off about!
…Walmart is all kinds of messed up for other reasons. Compared to their business practices, this is nothing.
http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Distraction_from_real_issues and http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Many_bad_things_in_the_world
I don’t feel like you can fault a corporation because they happen to carry a sexist shirt.
Yeah, I mean, it’s not like there are people who sign off on what Walmart sells, right? Which is why they carry so many shirts featuring racial slurs, right?
Wrong.
I’m sure you can go look through their books and find plenty on feminism, so I feel like this isn’t really news. It’s just..dumb.
http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/You%27re_being_emotional
You feel it’s “just dumb,” because it’s not about you or your whole gender. It’s not a “hilarious joke” you have to regularly experience in multiple scenarios.
You are not as “pro-women” as you think you are if your response to our dealing with rampant and commercialized sexism is something you feel comfortable calling “dumb.”
It’s also incredibly degrading! “Cool story babe” is dismissive of the woman as a person, in my mind as bad as the “Go make me a sandwich”. Things like this make me rage!
I’m a 17 year old female and I own this shirt. I am very feminist in a lot of my views, actions, and beliefs but I honestly just am amused by this shirt. It isn’t just sold at Walmart either, it’s a spin off of the very popularized expression “cool story bro…(fill in whatever here depending on the situation)” Yes, I can see how this can be taken as very degrading but it isn’t really supposed to be that way and I’ve mostly seen other girls wearing it. The shirt that really bothers me that is becoming popular right now says “Calm down, let’s not make this rape into a murder.” Tons of people are wearing this shirt and calling it hysterical, I find that more worrisome than a few teenagers making fun of the old women in the kitchen ideology.
Shirts like this aren’t nearly as overtly offensive as the “rape” shirt you mentioned, but they’re part of an ovearching societal attitude that teaches us all that women are “less than” and therefore more appropriately fodder for abuse and–yes–rape and murder. Nobody here is unaware of “Cool story bro”; it’s just that combined with a joke about sandwiches it reinforces the idea that women have nothing important to contribute and should stick to preparing food. Wearing a shirt like this one says that you agree.
By the way, society has short memory but people do not; the “old” kitchen ideology you mentioned doesn’t seem that old when you consider that there are plenty of women and men living today who grew up with it and considered the idea of women staying in the kitchen to be the natural state of things, along with not getting an education and not being allowed to take birth control or even own a bank account without the permission of a husband. We’re talking maybe two generations ago. Growing up like that and living through it affects the way that you interact with others and how you teach your children about women and men and our respective places in the world.