Wednesday, April 25, 2007

"Adopting [as] the new black."

*Update above*

I swear I have a sense of humor. Sometimes you can see it here. I actually did (gasp) think that Onion piece awhile ago was funny when no one else did. And I did (I'm ashamed to say) laugh at the Comedy Central piece about celebrity adoption, even though many families were aghast.
Why, then, is Urban Outfitter's "Adopting is the new black" t-shirt worthy of a rant-o-the-week? After all, they're often offensive, and enjoy the publicity that comes from offense, and is it really so much worse than those things above?
It is. Those pieces targetted adults making the choice to adopt, and hit their targets. This t-shirt misses its target, with the potential to make children feel even more like accessories/commodities than they already might, even more conspicuous than all those supposedly harmless "Just like Angelina!" comments do.
Please consider joining my rant-o-the-week, by email or phone to the company.

7 comments:

Third Mom said...

Holy crap, pardon my language! That absolutely stinks, and I'm passing it on!

Erin said...

Goodness! What a load of garbage. Crap, I've always liked urban outfitters too....

MomEtc. said...

I mentioned this on my blog as well. Someone in one of my aparent yahoo groups saw it. I'm certainly sending them a letter.

Unfortunately we are up against aparents in our Yahoo group who are defending this shirt because they really don't see the message in it and how ugly it is. I'm trying to gently explain it to them....that adoption is not "hip", nor "cool" nor some "fad". Hopefully they can understand that. If not, I am going to let them know how adoptees are reacting to the shirt to try to bring them around.

Life in Fitzville said...

Just found your blog, and I had posted about this on my blog yesterday as well! I also emailed the company and emailed several big adoption institutions. I am so glad our voices were heard!

Anonymous said...

ugh. Just ugh. WHAT are they thinking? I guess they are not thinking and that's the whole problem in a nutshell. sigh...

Anonymous said...

Thanks for writing about this! Now we need to work on eliminating the rest of the offensive adoption "logo" wear.

hazel said...

I can't believe how stupid and insensitive people can be! Can't they imagine how an adopted child seeing that shirt would feel??

So many people are just trying to be clever and make a quick buck.

It's like people criticizing celebrities for their choice to adopt as if they're doing it for publicity and not for the reasons the rest of us are. As if they don't go through the same soul-searching process that the rest of us do.