It almost reminds me of those Asian clothes with putatively English phrases on them that have actually been put together by someone who speaks no English. “DRY ROCKNROLL LIFESTYLE for PARADE LOVE” that sort of thing. Like whoever designed this was equally out of touch… but not with the language.
(Side note: You’re right about the dynamic, but it’s all mediated through the ass-kissing salesmen — buyers never even meet the designers. I used to work designing licensed Looney Tunes t-shirts and such; we in the art dept. were all big fans and would irritate the WB brand managers by aping Chuck Jones instead of xeroxing bits of the stylebook, but our salespeople somehow were not even remotely familiar with the characters, so made us do things like Tweety as a gangsta badass who was for some reason the same size as Taz. When we were tasked with brainstorming/prototyping a line of Valentine’s Day boxer shorts, they shot down the obvious Pepe Le Pew one because “he doesn’t sell.” Never mind that they hadn’t ever tried to.)
Seems to be a global phenomenon: In March, one of Germany’s biggest retailers decided to pull a similar shirt with the slogan “in Mathe bin ich Deko”. Big topic back then, coincidentally amidst a general sexism discussion.
There’s a difference between disliking a particular school because the experience isn’t good enough and doesn’t encourage a love of knowledge, and disliking school because they’re being evil and mean by trying to make you learn things. I’m talking about the latter here, and it’s a view that’s more prevalent than you’d think.
I remember a rather famous Pink Floyd song that started with the lines “we don’t need no education”, and I remember one of my teachers being very worried that we might take it seriously. Of course, we didn’t. I don’t think tee shirt slogans and pop lyrics have the effect you think they do. Relax.
Of course, being bad at music and dancing would be sad too; they’re both important.
On the other hand, when they say “music”, they’re probably not talking about performing, or music theory; they’re talking about “consuming pop culture un-analytically.”
Maybe they were thinking ahead and didn’t want to upset bloggers. Pepe Le Pew stalks, sexually assaults, and attempts to rape females of another species.
Ha! As part of our office wellness program, my company has actually instituted something called “Wiggle Wednesdays.” Every week, on said WW, we’re supposed to perform a variety of aerobic activities to stay healthy. I spend most of the day obsessively posting music videos from the Wiggles on the company intranet.
Or perhaps the wearer is good at selecting items they like. The inconvenience of having to make an actual payment is left to others. But honestly, I don’t get what it means to be “good at shopping” in this context. Shopping is a necessary but mostly unpleasant experience for me.
How I wish this were still true. I have noticed more and more that when I go to stores they have the percentage off figured out for you for sales. And working in retail for years now I can tell you that you would be amazed at the amount of people who get confused on sales tax, don’t look at prices or even have a clue on how much change they should get.
There’s a vast ocean of difference between being not good at math, and being so proud of not being good at math that you advertise it on apparel that you wear in your day-to-day life. I don’t have good directional sense, but I don’t have a single article of clothing that represents that.
I assume it’s not like my definition of being good at shopping. That is, knowing what you want before you go, getting in, and getting out as fast as possible. Shopping is like rescuing hostages but with not quite as many flashbangs.
