Twisted Twee: For Baby?

A company called, “Twisted Twee” has come up with some, umm, controversial tees. One of these shirts though is stirring parenting blogs a bit the

wrong way and I’m one of them. I first heard about this through my friend Michelle, over at AskewtoYou, but while reading more about it I’ve seen that several blogs are already commenting on it. Now that I know I’m not the only one weirded-out by this shirt I’m going to take a stab at it.

The twisted Twee Tassle shirt for babies is just strange. I don’t find it cute, however it isn’t as disturbing as I originally thought it was. At first look you think you see tassles hanging down from the chest area, but once you look closer you will see that this is a printed design. There are no tassles swinging in midair around the child. If there were you would definitely hear me screaming how sick and wrong this is. Yes, to me this shirt is still very disturbing and no, if this was given to my child, my child would not be wearing it.

The artist/designer of this shirt, Suzi Warren and she recently did an interview with ParentDish about this very shirt. Yes, ParentDish wasn’t very thrilled with the looks of the shirt either. Here’s what Suzi emailed ParentDish while Vacationing in order to defend herself:

“The Nipple Tassel t-shirt was designed as a response to my own distaste at seeing mini versions of sexy clothes on young children,” she wrote. “Five-year-olds wearing slashed mini skirts and boob tubes, little thumb-sucking Britneys.

“There is nothing very sexy about a baggy, lap neck, long sleeved t- shirt for a 6-month-old. So by embellishing this style of garment with printed nipple tassels, the result is not that the baby becomes sexualized by the tassels, but that the tassels are made benign and silly by the baby. In fact the more inert, innocent and unaware the infant is, the more ludicrous the contrast becomes.”

While I get why she is upset and hates seeing little 5 year old look like Britney Spears, this is not exactly standing up against them. These 5 year olds are going to see that their baby sister gets the tassle designed shirts and ask “Mommy, why can’t I have the one at the store that moves?” Trust me; I have two girls and two boys, when they see that someone can wear something they will ask.

Course it seems that I wasn’t the only one thinking this, ParentDish asked a very similar question (but their child being a 10 year old girl) and she responded:

“I guess my answer would simply be if you have doubts about it, don’t buy it,” she wrote. “Your daughter is probably smart enough, self confident enough and relaxed enough to share the irony, but maybe she’d hate it and become very angry about it and that’s probably not a bad thing either. Dressing a baby probably shouldn’t be laden with social significance.”

I don’t think she really answered what they were asking. Do you? The idea is you are saying your 10 year old can’t dress like that but you go and buy it for your younger daughter. That’s just saying it is okay or you care more for the other.

Not everyone will agree with me since this shirt is suppose to be satirical, they may like some of the other products she has on hand. Twisted Twee also sells shirts with Obama printed on the bottom, as well as other political figures. A few funny phrases came to mine as I looked over the site, presidents on the bottom but my favorite one was the shirt that said it all:

“The Force is Strong in this One.”

What’s your take on the shirts? Is it funny to you? Would you buy them?