November 3, 2005
What happened to etymology?
I saw this on a morning show the other day while getting ready for work, and found it very odd.
Teen Girls Protest Abercrombie & Fitch Shirts
About two-dozen teenage girls in Allegheny County are trying to create a “girlcott” against popular youth retailer Abercrombie and Fitch.
They say some of the company’s T-shirts degrade women and point to shirts with sayings such as “Who needs brains when you have these” or “I had a nightmare I was a brunette” as examples.
Sixteen-year-old Yagmur Muftuoglu, a junior at Gateway High School in Monroeville, says the attitudes represented in the shirts are too common in today’s schools.She says girls spend too much time on comparing looks and putting each other down and not enough time on learning.
All things I agree with. After all, if I had a teenage daughter, she wouldn’t leave the house wearing something that says “Who needs brains when you have these?” If I have kids, I plan to raise them with enough sense to know better than to wear something like this. I would hope that any daughter of mine would judge potential boyfriends by the content of their character, not the contents of their wallet (not like it’ll matter, because she will– of course– be prohibited from dating until she’s 35).
And this ties in perfectly with my absolute hatred of Abercrombie & Fitch. So for all intensive purposes, I’m in full support of their boycott of A&F.
But I refuse to refer to this as a “girlcott”. I understand the desire to use gender-neutral language, and that some girls may prefer to use language that empowers women if given the chance. Of course, I would suggest that this is only useful when the language being changes is gender-specific. “Boycott” is not. From a site on word etymology:
How did we get the word boycott? It doesn’t seem to me to have any logical root or basis in boys or cots.
Some words are not as easily dissected using logic as others, though once we look at boycott and realize that it seems to have nothing to do with boy or cot, another logical possibility is that it was named after someone, as is the case with boycott. The first person to be boycotted was a Captain Charles Cunningham Boycott, a British estate manager in Ireland. He was boycotted in Ireland in 1880 by the Irish Land League, an organization which fought for farming reform, lower rent, etc. Those who did not do as the group wished were subjected to organized ostracism, as was Captain Boycott. The word has been used in this sense until the present day.
I understand the whole feminism “girl power!” thing. But come on, let’s be reasonable here. The word “boycott” is not a tool of the oppressive patriarchy. It was derived from a proper noun. When even ABC news uses sneer quotes around the term “girlcott”, you know something’s up.
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“(not like it’ll matter, because she will– of course– be prohibited from dating until she’s 35).”
Daughters being, of course, God’s curse on us for living the way we do from the ages of 16 to 25.
Brad, Your daughter is going to be living at home for a loooong time if you don’t allow her to date till she is 35. Our girls were allowed to date at the age of 16 yrs old. They turned out just fine.
I think it is a shame that A & F is pushing those kinds of clothes for young ladies. It’s almost as bad as black men calling their women, “bitches” and “hoes”. It’s such a put down.