My god. On the one hand, they are appalling. On the other hand, think how much time you'd save if you saw these in your date's apartment. Just cross him off the list and be on your way.

My little brother loved his little toy vaccuum when he was little. He would follow around my mother with it when she was vaccuuming. He didn't exactly grow up to be a housekeeper. (I'm looking at the last one.)

all of these are indeed awful and disturbing, but the pottery barn toys are, to me, the most disturbing of all because they are marketed as toys in earnest that girls might get for birthday or christmas. There's no joke there; it's not a "gag gift" you'd see at spencers like the rest of the products (although the "battered" one is a close second! my god!!)

Yes, these things are horrid and keep the stigma going. We need people to create products that are gender neutual.

I vote for the "It ain't rape if she ain't awake" t-shirt. That's the sickest thing ever.

I vote for the t-shirts, of any variety. A blatent advertisement of misogyny (and the desensitization and social norm creation that accompanies such vile public content) is most damaging and appalling to me...

I think the "It ain't rape if she ain't awake" is definitely the most disturbing. Also, their web page has a series of shirts each worse than the one before, including one that seems to make a joke out of the rampant murder of women in Ciudad Juárez and other Mexican border towns.

That's a tough one...so many repulsive choices. I'd say a tie between the vagina cologne (a urinary tract infection waiting to happen) and the "It ain't rape if she ain't awake" shirt.

Closely followed by the "I'm too pretty to do math" shirt. Girls have little enough encouragement to learn math and science as it is.

I vote for everything sold at sinfulshirts.com. (Although they do us a service by making it easy to find losers among us.)

2nd choice is the battered shirt. This must be intended as a joke, but it's not funny.

And finally, the boob doctor. Is that the modern equivalent of "I must I must I must increase my bust"?

The table. Definitely the table. I've rarely seen anything creepier than that. But it is closely followed by those toys which remind me of the past eight years of raising my self-defined "sporty girl" and growing more and more enraged while trying to find clothing, toys, halloween costumes, etc. that are NOT colored pink or decorated with princesses.

Spyderkl- the Vulva cologne isn't *for* the vulva- it's to smell like them.
And I'd say it's a tie between "It aint rape if she ain't awake" and "I like my women like I like my chicken"
Effing Sickos. Ugh.

And not only that, but that T-shirt is dispensing spurious legal advice in violation of the prohibition against the unauthorized practice of law.

I go with Pottery Barn because, instead of catering to pervs and headcases, it will actually probably be bought by legions of yuppies.

-- I don't know if a t-shirt is really a product, so I'd have to stick with the woman toilet.

But if you say what is most offensive, it's the t-shirt about women being battered like chicken. It's offensive on so many levels. For one thing, the way it is described, it's premeditated. Secondly, it expresses a sick fetish of sorts...the words "I like" them that way. Thirdly, there is no hickish phrasing like "It ain't rape" t-shirt. This is clear and sober. And finally, the graphics on the battered t-shirt are just so much better, layed out like an ad, and the main word is so prominant. You can't miss that from a mile away.

*

I think the table, by the way, is kind of sexy.

*

Okay, you're all going to hate me for this. But... I LOVE the "I'm too pretty to do math" shirt. In fact, it comes with matching pajama bottoms. For the past two months, my plan has been to buy the pajama set for myself when I get my first article published in a peer-reviewed journal. See, the article is all physics, but what I do in it is solve this really annoying second order ordinary differential equation.

It took so much programming and so much reading of old math/engineering texts for me to work through the equations (for those in the know, it has asymetric boundary conditions, which is what's so annoying about it). I used cartesian tensors. I calculated stress and strain. And now I want my pajamas!

So that was supposed to be my present to myself when all the work is done.

Is it bad if I buy it? Am I supporting a company that encourages women to think they're bad at math?

I'm asking seriously. Please tell me what you think. Obviously, the shirt is a joke to me - but maybe not to others?

Gotta go for the Paul t-shirt, simply because anyone who quotes the original fundie generally loses my respect.

All the boob stuff is stupid, to be sure, but not offensive. Like EJ said, it's just a time-saver in the quest to avoid morons.

The t-shirts are, on the other hand, are awesomely awful.

I'm not against a little offensiveness in my humor, but please, there has to be some actual humor!

I guess the ephesians one could be worn with a sense of irony, but that's the only one.

I can't even vote for any of the others as "worst" of the bunch because they're all so bad.

The other products are just dumb, though I have seen that woodworker's other stuff (that table is at least 5 years old), and he is talented.

I think it's a tie between the rape shirt and the chicken shirt.

Ick, uh, yeah. Change my vote to the rape shirt. Definitely trumps the Paul t-shirt.

I'd have to say the table is the only thing there that really offended me... I guess the t-shirts don't bother me because the only people I can envision wearing them are 350 pound sweaty men who no one would take seriously anyway.

The pottery barn vacuum cleaner pisses me off, but honestly the kitchen stuff doesn't bother me--I used to love playing with fake food in my fake kitchen as a girl and I definitely am not going to grow up to be a housewife (although I wouldn't object to a househusband).

DT--are you a solid state theorist or a relativist?

DT--

Congrats on getting your pub!

Are you a solid state theorist or a relativist?

Bittergradstudent - neither. I do geophysics. And it still hasn't been published yet... but thanks!

What do you think about my pajama problem?

dt: well, you could go the cafepress route--perhaps even step it up a notch and have some real fun with it, you know, maybe something like a universal NO sign over

$\nabla^{a}\sigma_{ab}=0$

The best t-shirt I ever made showed the integral of e to the x. All the nerds laughed...
I'm being slow. I don't get yours. What are the backslashes and the curly braces representing?

I tried it in TeX... I still don't get it. But how about an "allergic to LaTeX" shirt?

the Vulva cologne isn't *for* the vulva- it's to smell like them.

Wow. That's just moved it up to #1 on the list. I clicked on the link after I posted my comment - like an idiot.

Oh, nothing particuarly fun--just TeX gibberish the vanishing of the divergence of the stress tensor--it's the only way I know to write down physics-y stuff on blog comments.

though "allergic to LaTeX" is a totally sweet T-shirt

bittergradstudent - it was the "$"s that threw me off. I get it now.

So I've also been thinking of making day-of-the-week equation panties to go with my day-of-the-week superhero thongs. What do you think?

DT--that is all sorts of fab. I had a friend once who had the 2nd law of thermodyamics tatooed on her arm.

Ah, but which equation to pair up with which day?

Haha, that's awesome, DT.

"I'm too pretty to do Math" upsets me because... why is it always Math, or comments on intelligence? Why don't I ever see shirts that say things like "I'm too pretty to cook and clean," or "I'm too hot to need makeup and sexy clothes," or anything that doesn't play into female stereotypes?

I don't know if you want to support them, DT, but I don't think it matters if you have the pjs. Anyone who sees you dressed for bed probably knows you well enough to know it's a joke.

Plus, I have a shirt that says "Not everything is flat on the prairies" because I wear a D-cup. I rarely wear it though... because I realised that I don't actually like drawing attention to my breasts.

I have a shirt that says:

FRONT: e^(Ï€i)+1=0
BACK: I just saw GOD, man!!!

Haha. Always loved that one.

I will SO buy any "I'm too hot to wear make up" shirt... that's radical! Someone's gotta make that.

Or if someone would make a t-shirt of that old Onion headline:

"Report: 'Girls gone wild' actually just regular girls, but drunker and with low self-esteem"

I like the 'I'm too pretty do to math', but only on women with/working on postgrad degrees. Bonus points if your field required lots of stats classes. That is to say, only if it's 110% ironic; taken seriously... *shudder*

The other two shirts are... uh... ick. I'm not sure even irony makes them ok. The sentiments are just too toxic.

I want a shirt that reads, 'Girls Gone Feral' with a picture of Leela on it.

I'm voting for the pottery barn toys for girls, not because the other stuff isn't appalling, but because, well, I think the T-shirts are meant to be disgusting, so I don't want to give them the satisfaction, whereas the toys...I just thought we were beyond that by now...

the barefoot teddy is creepy as all fuck, but I'm gonna go with the rape t-shirt. That is some fucked up shit right there. Ugh.

The worst one gotta be the battered women T-shirt. I don't think I have ever seen anything as bad. As for the girls' toys, i would have loved those when I was little. And no i didn't grow up to be really domesticated either.

I vote for the Pottery Barn toys, with the vulva cologne a runner up. The T-shirts just seem so stupid to me that they have to be satirical... right?

JackGoff - good one! I've also heard of one that says "we're #-e^(Ï€i)!"

Prarielily - Yeah, anyone who sees me in PJs knows me well enough to get the joke. My concern is supporting the company.

Bittergradstudent - you know, I'm going to have to think about which equation for which day. Also thong vs. hipster. Maybe a mix? BTW, the 2nd law is a scary tattoo.

NBarnes - yeah, I'm in the demographic for which "too pretty to do math" is totally ironic.

Oh, and I think the worst product is the "battered" one.

That table is awful. It has my vote.

And while the Alloy shirt horrifies me [I suck at math/science], context is everything. What NBarnes said.

Go for it, DT.

So hard to choose, but I vote for the rape shirt.

Although that table really creeps me out. The vulva perfume didn't bother me until I actually went to their website, which I don't recommend doing.

(And I LOVE the "I'm too hot to wear makeup" idea.)

I'm going to have to say:

#1 Battered
#2 Rape

Though it's a shame that the "Calm Down! Let's not turn this rape into a murder" shirt from sinfulshit.com wasn't among those pictured. It left me speechless

I saw a totally nondescript, non-drunk yuppieish woman the other night at my corner store wearing a t-shirt that read "I fuck like a girl." That was charming but now I see it was nothing by comparison.

The "it's not rape" shirt has to be the worst. I think the "battered" one comes in close second.

As for the "I'm too pretty," one, I'll opt for a shirt that says "I'm too cute to wear ugly tanktops."
They're undershirts, not outerwear. No matter what you put on them: print, glitter, beads, they will still look tacky. Possibly even worse for actually attempting to add something to it.

I have to give it to the battered woman tshirt, with a Miss Congeniality to the table.

boobies:
boob pillow

shirts:
battered women

???:
torso computer.

I found Vulva to be a nice change from the normal "I hate fish" talk I normally hear.

but, in all, I think the pottery barn toys are the worst for many said reasons. I find it said, though, that people see think and automatically think young girl as they see blue and automatically think young boy. it seems to serve as a constant reminder that our society is far from accepting the radical ideas of equality it claims to stand for.

DT, I think you are definitely allowed the ironic pyjamas (especially as, being pyjamas, presumably they'll only be seen by those who are in on the joke).

My vote's for the nasty pink vacuum cleaner toy.

i think the sinful shirts are the most offensive, but just in general all these items make me really depressed. boob pillows? c'mon, what? why would someone? ugh. people have trauma.