Posted on 08/15/2013 9:29:31 AM PDT by rightwingintelligentsia
A JCPenney back-to-school ad that implies kids will be friendless unless they wear the right clothing is promoting bullying, charged a flurry of critics on social media this week.
“Your ad about cool kids wearing JCPenney clothes, showing a child sitting alone at lunch is despicable,” fired off one Facebook user. Another added, “How clueless are you? What a horrible bully-promoting commercial.” Twitter users have called it “tone deaf” and “more self-immolation” for the company.
The ad, posted online by the retailer in late July and aired as part of a TV campaign earlier this summer, includes a shot of a kid in a school cafeteria, surrounded by friends. When the mom in the voice-over talks about the importance of buying her child cool school clothes, she notes, “I’ve been told this stuff can make or break your entire year.” At that moment, all the kids except for one disappear from the room.
That message was enough to prompt the national antibullying organization Stand for the Silent to kick off a campaign against the ad.
“My wife and I lost our 11-year-old son to suicide due to being bullied, and yes ma'am we do oppose this ad,” founder Kirk Smalley told Yahoo! Shine in an email. “We feel it does promote excluding kids that don't wear the ‘right’ clothes. This is totally against what we have spent our entire savings on and the last three years of our lives traveling to speak at schools and teach these kids. We've spoken at 715 schools and to over 740,000 kids and taught them, ‘You are somebody,’ and that you are not what you wear, what religion you believe, what color your skin, etc.”
(Excerpt) Read more at shine.yahoo.com ...
Is there anything that doesn’t provoke “outrage” nowadays?
Another reason to have school uniforms.
I haven’t seen JCPenny’s ad but K-Mart is running “Be A Trayvon” ads.
Reprehensible marketing tactics, but they’ve been using them for decades.
When I was in school my siblings and I were the subject of scorn and bullying because my Dad was too thrifty and sensible to buy us the “right” tennis shoes. We survived.
Please, gimme a break.
Can we all just be men and say screw you PC lying ba$t$&rd$. We dont give a damn what you think anymore? Problem solved.
I have a photo of my granddaughter as she enters 7th grade. She’s happy although I wish her shorts were longer. You can tell from her face that she’s joyful. Have a photo (from Facebook) of my cousin’s granddaughter entering 7th grade. She does not look happy. She’s wearing a uniform and sensible shoes and glasses. Poor girl is big, not fat but looks very tall and a bit stocky.
I'll admit that I didn't see the connection until your post.
However, in addition to muting or changing the channel whenever I hear it, I've been thinking about complaining to K-Mart about the obnoxiousness of the ad.
And it's on a variety of channels that I didn't think it would be worth targeting.
Lord have mercy.
When I was young we didn’t need advertising to tell us that if we didn’t wear the “right” clothes we wouldn’t be accepted. Kids are the most notorious conformists going.
How ‘bout the K-Mart back to school ads promoting ghetto style for elementary kids?
The ad is insensitive but it’s also true. Wearing the wrong clothes in school can make your life hell. My clothes were from a thrift store and nothing matched and I got put downs all the time. Just the way it is. Kids are mean.
I'm a Trayvon you're a Trayvon
wouldn't you like to be a Trayvon too?
I'm a Trayvon. be a Trayvon!
Attacks on the nuclear family and Christianity.
I can’t hit mute fast enough on it.
Another vote for uniforms. The charter schools around here require them and they seem to promote relatively civilized behavior.
Having watched the ad, the whole “bullying” crap is a pantload by hand-wringing pantywaists.
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