Jay Jays ‘can’t sit with us’ T-shirt controversy: shirt not needed says Wendy Tuohy

ISOLATION is one of teen girls’ top weapons of choice when it comes to bullying and they don’t need a T-shirt to endorse them being mean girls, writes Wendy Tuohy.

There is a call for this Jay Jays T-shirt to be banned. Image taken from Jay Jays site. To be used with a news story about the offensive T-shirt only.

I DO love the energy of feisty teenage girls but if you spend any time around them you soon realise their potential to shred each other’s self-esteem is limitless.

Girls do bullying differently from boys but they’re no less efficient when they put their minds to it.

Isolation is one of their top weapons of choice — that and social media demolition — and it is so potent that girls put on the outer can do much worse than just become distressed.

Teen girls don’t need a T-shirt to endorse them being mean girls, writes Wendy Tuohy.

Very sadly self-harm is an epidemic among adolescent girls and bullying by peers is a major cause.

So while you might think it’s a big over-reaction to ask Jay Jay’s to remove a T-shirt with the slogan “You can’t sit with us” (borrowed from the movie Mean Girls) on it, as a preventive measure dropping it makes perfect sense.

Parents can’t be there to moderate outlandish girl behaviour, but at least they can prevent girls wearing a T-shirt which makes a bullying slogan fashionable.

Psychologist Michael Carr-Gregg is right to highlight the need for companies marketing to impressionable girls to be careful with their messaging.

Bullied girls have taken their own lives and while no one is suggesting a T-shirt could produce such a tragic result as the sole factor, anything that fosters the idea it’s fine to lock other girls out is unhelpful.

IS THIS T-SHIRT UNACCEPTABLE?

Of course there’s the risk of us becoming a nanny state and losing our collective sense of humour, but this generation of teen girls’ mental health is under enough strain as it is. They’re more anxious than their predecessors and measured levels of depression and self harm are higher.

There was always the pressure, especially for girls, to be seen as popular. Social acceptance is very important to most teenage girls.

But this lot are also surrounded by social media influences telling them they need to look thin and beautiful, sexy and confident 24/7 to be good enough, and are also battling factors such as pressure to be like the girls in the porn their generation is soaking in; so adding clothing that approves bullying to that mix isn’t useful.

As well as making emotional life harder for girls, social media has made bullying much easier to do to great effect; so if even one message that seems to give it the thumbs up can be avoided that’s got to be a good thing.

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