How do you punish a foul-mouthed kid?
Bathe his mouth with hot sauce and soap or ground him until he’s 30?
Savvy kids are bypassing parental punishments these days by letting their shirts do the swearing for them.
Clothing retailers around the world have long marketed profanity-printed tees, though one uber-popular teen-centric apparel store, Urban Outfitters, is currently generating international media attention for its line of stickers featuring the phrase “Punk as F…”
And by … I mean u-c-k.
The f-word is spelled out in its entirety on the sticker, which an increasing amount of teens have now taken to embellishing t-shirts with.
The recent media hype was sparked by a mom from Ridgewood, New Jersey, who went ballistic while checking on an Urban Outfitters order at the request of her teen daughter.
When Margaret Gutierrez logged onto the retailer’s site she discovered a plethora of items sporting the profane phrase, including stickers featuring the f-bomb and marijuana plants.
“I was flabbergasted that would be the way that Urban Outfitters presented themselves,” Gutierrez told New York’s Fox 5 News.
Not for nothing, but Gutierrez may want to buy a clue instead of giving her daughter money to spend on Urban Outfitters’ overpriced ensembles.
My kid’s only seven, but even I know that browsing around Urban Outfitters is a far cry from shopping at Sears or Gymboree. Which is not to say I condone the retailer’s decision to capitalize on profanity and illegal drug use; I don’t. However, I strongly believe that in today’s society parents need to be acutely aware of teenage trends. And if your kid feels the need to slap an f-bomb sticker on his shirt to look cool, yo, then you’ve likely got problems that reach beyond pop culture solutions.
Bottom line: When you’ve got teenage kids living under your roof, naivety is your worst enemy.
I am no spring chicken. In fact, I am so old that Urban Outfitters may be embarrassed by the fact that I used to shop at its State Street location while I was an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
I tore into the store four hours before my first date with a guy who turned out to be my college sweetheart. I skipped the pot plant emblazoned shirts and purchased a pair of gold-ish Girbaud Jeans.
I dropped $60 on those pants… which may be more obscene than featuring the f-word on a sticker.