I came acoss this column the one day I picked up a newspaper
while on vacation recently. It appeard in the Myrtle Beach Sun News on
June 27, 1996.
Yvonne
Girls deserve to dream, too.
Leonard Pitts Jr.
Miami Herald
This is a tale of two T-shirts.
The first features Margaret, the Dennis The Menace character, beneith the legend: "Someday a woman will be PRESIDENT!" You might remember the controversy that errupted in September when a Wal-Mart in Miramar, Fla., yanked the shirt, claiming it was offensive to "family values." The company quickly retreated in the face of public outcry.
The second shirt also features Margaret. On it, the Menace's nemisis is seen in traditionally male roles, including astronaut, firefighter and scholar. Dr. Ann Moliver Rubin of Miami Lakes, Fla., the author of both shirts, says that in April a Wal-Mart buyer refused to carry the new one unless it is redrawn so that it also features Margaret as...a housewife.
" I told her that those cartoon figures are all housewives. They come home from being astronauts...police officers, firefighters."
Wal-Mart, for the record, denies Rubin's accusation. Buyer Lori Costly says the idea of Margaret as housewife was mentioned only ot in passing in the context of a discussion over ways to make the shirt more attractive to customers.
According to Costly, the real reson Wal-Mart passed on the new shirt is because the old one tanked. Sales were worse than pitiful.
I'm in no position to argue. But I will note that Wal-Mart told a different story in September. Spokeswoman Jane Bockholt informed a Miami Herald reporter that in one month, 81 percent of the children's shirts and 60 percent of the women's sizes had flown out the door. "They're still buying the first shirt," Rubin says. "And they're buying it because customers are asking for it."
But let's not get bogged down in sales figures here. The issue is not number-crunching, but dream-crunching. It is about what we tell the little girl. Do we say to her that she is capable enough to captain the ship or run the team? That she can publish the paper or doctor the patient? Do we tell her she can even aspire to lead the free world?
Or do we still say with our words and our actions that her dreams ought to be more humble than that?
Ruben, a pyschologist, says she founded her organization, Woman Are Wonderful, and went into the T-shirt business after finding evidence that we still tamp down the dreams of girls. In 1993, she conducted a survey and found that 41 percent of boys think "only;boys are smart enough to become president."
According to her, "it really irritates" boys and men when she wears the T-shirt that predicts otherwise. She's been called a bitch and says one man pointedly told her the prediction will not come true "in God's lifetime."
Out of curiosity, my wife and I wore the shirt to see what would happen. Between us, we hit shopping malls, downtown streets and even the White House. Most men we encountered gave the shirt studiously neutral glances. Two glared at it with unmistakable hostility. One asked my wife how he might get one. And one old guy laughed loudly and made a sexist remark.
But you know what women and girls did? They smiled. God, how they smiled. Sweet smiles, private smiles, bright smiles.
They smiled so readily it made me sad. I wondered how often women encounter affirmation from the world at large. Not very, I fear.
I remember one girl, maybe 14 years old, whom I passed at the east fence of the White House. She smiled, and this look stole into her eyes. This shine, this glow, this sparkle as if what she read had suddenly ignited her with possiblities she'd never considered before.
I found myself wanting to know what will become of her. Will she grow up to nourish limitless dreams? Or will she forget what a T-shirt said and allow herself to be circumscribed by the preconceptions of boys and men?
It's unknowable, of course, but I felt lifted as we passed each other in the shadow of the White House. I had a good feeling about that girl.
