[Times photos: Patty Yablonski] Attitude T’s, a popular teen fashion trend that some folks find disturbing, sport suggestive messages that are hard to miss -- or misinterpret.

By DAVE SCHEIBER

© St. Petersburg Times,
published August 17, 2001

"Attitude T's'' that send saucy messages are the hottest items in teen fashion. But do you really want your 13-year-old to think of herself as a "vixen''?

Okay, the truth is, I'm skulking through the mall, using the kids as cover and trying not to look too strange hanging around junior girls clothing aisles.

The objective of this recon mission: an unscientific survey of a hot -- and jarring -- trend in female teen fashion that is filling T-shirt shelves in stores across the land.

The attitude T.

You will know one when you run into one. We do, right off the bat, at Tyrone Square Mall. It hangs prominently at the front entrance of that bastion of safe, wholesome, All-American values, Sears. It is a light blue T-shirt, small enough for a 10-year-old, with colorful words leaping at us:

"HOTTIE, Vixen, Flame, Savage, Fire, Love hot Stuff, Devil." A few "X's" are thrown in as well -- though probably not intended as an educational refresher in Roman numerals.

Flanked by my trio of adolescent experts, we approach the popular teen specialty store Gadzooks. My ace team waves me over to a potpourri of multicolored T-shirts with messages that have a certain truck stop je ne sais quoi:

"Boy Candy."

"Objects Under This Shirt Are Larger Than They May Appear."

"My Boyfriend Kisses Better Than Yours."

"Bad Kitty." And hot-pink tanks emblazoned with a number that, unfortunately in this case, does not stand for the year of Woodstock, the moon walk or the Miracle Mets.

"69."

In the next hour, we discover other stores are keeping pace. At Wet Seal and Contempo are "Foxy" T-shirts and Playboy Clothing line tops with either the bunny logo or phrases like "Property of Playmates Club." At Rave, another "HOTTIE" and a "Bad Girl."

We're just warming up.

In Burdines' young contemporary section, we stumble upon a black net tank with big, swirling silver letters spelling "SEXY" on the front. At JCPenney, a baby blue T-shirt advertises "Maybe If You're Lucky" and a black shirt with puckered pink lips reads, "Hold My Purse While I Kiss Your Boyfriend."

There's even a Disney Classics shirt featuring a small image of Tinker Bell and the words "Naughty Girl" -- and I gather it doesn't mean naughty as in not helping with the dishes.

A day later, I return with my 16 year-old daughter for phase two: buying a bunch of these shirts for the newspaper to photograph. I ponder the image of me, alone, handing the young woman at the register a pile of T shirts that say Boy Candy, Sexy -- and switch to Plan B.

I slip my daughter a few $50 bills provided by the newspaper and go outside to wait like a wimp and ponder the, er, $69,000 Question:

How did the junior T's become the junior tease?

Cashing in on 'in-your-face'

Wendy Liebmann, an in-demand fashion trend and marketing consultant in New York City, views the racier messages as simply the next in the fashion progression -- from Madonna in the 1980s and '90s to the hip-hugging, midriff-baring styles of young female pop stars.

"It really is part of a fairly broad and continuing trend of very sexy fashion, and that's all about bodies and bare skin, and silhouettes," says Leibmann, president of WSL Strategic Retail. "If you see it on Christina Aguilera or Britney Spears or Jessica Simpson, then the kids want it."

The T-shirt is just part of the package. "If you don't get the message from the bod, you get the message from the shirt," she says.

Manufacturers have gotten the message.

"The retailers are very keen for it to do more, because apparel sales have been really slow," says Liebmann. "So they're very eager for something else to be brewing, and if it's this, they're happy."

Richard Clareman is certainly happy. He is president of a California-based teen apparel company Self Esteem, a popular line with females 13-25 and a big player in the arena of attitude T's -- as they are known in the retail world. Clareman says his company made $7-million in 1997, its first year, and will make "close to $100-million this year."

Self Esteem manufactures a wide array of clothing, much of it containing sweet phrases of the angel-princess ilk. He sells tops with tame sensibilities for the "Tweens" -- the 8-12 bracket. But Clareman's company also offers a steady stream of edgier messages for the 13-18 juniors group -- for instance, the Hottie-Vixen-Savage, the Maybe If You're Lucky and the Hold My Purse While I Kiss Your Boyfriend models.

Has Clareman thought about what parents might say if their daughter comes back from the mall with a "Vixen" shirt?

"In the words of Howard Stern, if the parents don't like it, we'll sell more units," he says. "But I will tell you, we believe we have an ethical responsibility to the market, and to our world, so there are some shirts that we eliminate."

A boy-bashing theme bit the dust. " "Boys Are Losers,' "Boys Lie,' "Boys Cheat' -- they were incredible, but we got a lot of grief for it, so we pulled them back," he says. "I heard it from the National Organization for Women, the children's advocacy group. I don't want to cause controversy."

Welcome to the middle of it.

Clareman says Self Esteem gets many of its best ideas from teens themselves. Their representatives conduct focus groups, attend concerts, hang out in parking lots to see what teens are wearing and log onto teen chat rooms to see if any phrases or ideas pop up for a potential T-shirt.

Self Esteem gets feedback from stores on which items are too hot to handle. One that apparently is not: the number 69, a sexually loaded icon from the '60s that has made a comeback courtesy of certain manufacturers and specialty stores.

"You put a 69 on a T-shirt, it blows out the door," Clareman says.

"We went to shop in Europe and saw the number 69 all over. So now we do All-Star 69, Hottie 69, Angel 69."

But is it okay for a 13-year-old to buy one?

"To me, I know nothing," he says. "That's a number."

Two views: Teens and grown-ups

Jorge Ramon, senior fashion editor for Teen People magazine in New York, regards attitude T's as an offshoot of traditional teenage irreverence.

"It's a little bit of a shock value thing, and a little bit of attention-getting," he says. "It's kind of like, "Look at me, I've got the guts to wear something, what are you going to say about it?' "

Here is what the school systems in Pinellas, Hillsborough and Pasco counties are going to say about it: Go home and come back with a new shirt on.

Hillsborough expressly forbids "garments or jewelry which displays or suggest sexual or vulgar" wording or graphics. Pinellas has similar restrictions but leaves the final decision to the principal.

Pasco's rules forbid sexually explicit or implicit clothing and say students "shall wear modest clothing . . . consistent with community standards, as determined by the school principal."

So what are the kids -- and their parents -- saying?

"The kids wearing this kind of stuff show no respect for themselves," said Judy Hock of Tampa, shopping at WestShore Plaza with her daughters Erica, 14, and Jessica, 7. "They don't understand that it's advertising for their own body. They think it's cool and provocative. But it's trashy and sleazy and actually putting them down. I think it's directed at younger and younger kids every year."

Erica dislikes the attitude T's. "I definitely wouldn't wear a shirt that said, "Boy Candy' " she says.

A graduate of Madison Middle School and freshman at Robinson High, Erica has seen the shirts in both schools despite the dress code.

"Oh yeah," she says.

Mackenzie Shivers, a 16-year-old from Berkeley Prep in Tampa, says her school strictly prohibits provocative T's, and she wouldn't wear them anyway. "Some of them are fine, but a lot of them are tacky and I'm not a big fan of them," says Mackenzie.

"I mean, "Oops, I said the f-word,' I would be offended seeing a kid walking around with that," chimes in her mother, Nancy Shivers. "I certainly wouldn't let my child out of the house with that on."

Four hours in two big malls produced only one HOTTIE sighting mixed in with Angels, Princesses, Cuties and one old man wearing a T-shirt that read "I'm Retired. Don't Ask Me A Damn Thing."

Judgment calls by the specialists

Manufacturers and retailers say they are comfortable with what they are selling as they battle fiercely for their share of teen dollars.

"It has been really strong business for us the last year, and it continues to grow," says Jim Motley, chief financial officer for Dallas-based Gadzooks, home of the "Boy Candy" T. "The girls love 'em."

Motley says a T-shirt committee reviews the content of all shirts before okaying them for sale in their more than 400 stores. They don't sell the ones that "go over the line," he says.

"And so you have to try to find the ones that are racy enough, the kind that ride the fence, that (are) going to get an 18-year-old's attention, without crossing it," he says.

"There are some people who probably don't like the low-rise jeans, but we don't set the fashion trends," Motley says. "But if we're going to stay in business and earn a profit for our shareholders, we have to certainly chase the fashion trends."

Motley says that Gadzooks markets to girls ages 14-18, though he knows some shoppers may be younger and some older. A father of three boys, Motley says parents must play a part.

"What's acceptable for an 18-year-old is probably not acceptable for an 11-year-old," he says. "We have mothers who will come back in and say my daughter bought this T-shirt, I want my money back. We gladly refund their money. . . . We really do try to make a good judgment balance between morality and business."

Oakland's Cosmic Debris, run by an ex-skateboarder and race-car driver, sports a line of shirts for juniors featuring a cartoonish character named Oopsy Daisey.

In one shirt, there's Oopsy, surrounded by fallen Ninja characters, proclaiming on a shirt, "Oopsy, I killed a gang of Ninjas." In another she is saying, "Oopsy, I said the f-word."

Maldana Towhidy of Cosmic Debris says there is a big difference between those tongue-in-cheek Oopsy shirts and the more sexually charged ones made by others.

"It's not a sexual innuendo," she says. "It's a funny little, "Oopsy, I said the f-word, I'm kind of bad, but I'm not really -- I just messed up.' "

How popular is Oopsy Daisey? Britney Spears is seen on the company's Web site wearing the "f-word" model, an Oopsy book will be published next year and Cosmic Debris says it has turned down offers to make an Oopsy movie.

Big business at big stores

At the larger mainstream outlets -- such as Sears and JCPenney -- the challenge is to stock enough attitude T's to attract young teens away from specialty boutiques without going too far.

Sears does a huge business in T-shirts, selling more than 200 varieties in its 860 outlets, says national communications manager Maureen Jenkins.

"Some are what we call the boyfriend message T's, like "I'm not mean, you're just not cute enough' or another might be "Boys are toys,' " she says. "But the whole point is to make sure that there's nothing offensive, that these are just fun items and selling well with our teenage and young customers. . . . We pass on anything we feel goes too far."

But wait. The Hottie-Vixen-Savage T has passed muster with Sears.

"It's up to the parents to make that call about what's appropriate for their child," Jenkins says.

Recently, JCPenney offered a surprising view of parental involvement in a national TV commercial. A teenage girl is shown adjusting her denim hipster jeans in her room. Her mother pops her head in and exclaims, "You can't go to school looking like that!" The mom then tugs the jeans a little lower on her daughter's hipbones. This week, the company yanked the spot after a barrage of negative reaction.

Like Sears, JCPenney stocks some attitude T's in its large array of shirts, such as the "Maybe If You're Lucky" and "Naughty Girl" designs. "T-shirts are very hot with juniors," says national spokesman Tim Lyons. "So to compete, we have to be right there with the same mix of merchandise."

The question is, where is it all heading from here?

Consultant Liebmann foresees a battle between parents and retailers over how far teen styles go. There's the old teens vs. parents struggle, too.

"It has been a battle between teens and their parents over the years," she says. "However, if the influence or impact (of the T-shirts) becomes too young, parents won't say, "Oh my God, That's my teenager, I have to live with it,' they'll say "That's my 8-year-old!' And that's a whole other conversation."

Self Esteem's Clareman believes the T-shirt trend has nearly run its course. "The second girls don't want T-shirts that say things -- and that's going to be very soon -- we'll move on to the next thing. We think there's a whole new thing coming back to pretty and feminine. That's what happens."

And the next thing for me: Find my oldest daughter in her nice, solid Gap shirt with no sayings on it, grateful that she can't stand attitude T's.

I think I'm going to need her help returning all this stuff.

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