Editorial: Power of the pocketbook

Sunday, Feb. 5, 2006 | 12:32 p.m.

Call it the new feminism. A grassroots effort by a group of teenagers to stop a national retail chain's sales of T-shirts with slogans demeaning to girls has worked - and has also inspired the company to introduce a new, more positive line of slogans.

According to the St. Petersburg Times, three months after some two dozen 13- to 16-year-old girls launched their November "girlcott" to protest Abercrombie & Fitch shirts with such slogans as "Who needs brains when you have these?" the company has yanked the line from its shelves and replaced it with shirts with such sayings as, "Cute and classy" and ''Brunettes have brains.''

The members of Allegheny Girls as Grantmakers, a group of Pennsylvania teens that awards grants to projects that empower women, took on one of the nation's most popular chain stores by e-mailing their friends and asking them to forward the plea to others. Three days after the campaign's organizers appeared on the NBC's "Today" show in November, the 114-year-old clothing outfitter recalled several styles. In January, the Times reports, the company released a new line of shirts with slogans that are more empowering and less crude.

Maybe the feminist movement isn't over, but merely looks different. These little girls - to whom we worried Barbie dolls and Snow White would give the wrong impressions - are confident and comfortable with the idea that they can do or be anything they want. Perhaps they are beginning to be offended by adults who try to sell them the old stereotypes.

Hopefully, this is the beginning of a larger trend, where retailers competing for the billions of discretionary dollars that teens have to spend will discover a shrinking market for sexually demeaning or violent clothing styles, video games and music. With any luck, our teenagers just won't be buying it anymore.