OMG, y'all. You'll never guess what kids at a Mississippi school had to see this week! A sixth grader waltzed into school wearing a t-shirt that showed off the United States Marine Corps' bulldog's butt right down to his (barely there) dangling doggy genitalia.
Thank goodness the school administrators came a-running to protect those wee ones and their eyes. They told 13-year-old Jordan Griffith he needed to take the shirt his big brother gave him and turn it inside out. Because we can't just have little kids seeing something they can see in nature on a kid's t-shirt, can we?
Oh ... wait.
Nature.
Hmmm. It looks like the folks at the South Jones Elementary forgot about what happens when their kids walk outside and see a real animal. Perhaps they'll send letters home to parents from here on out, forbidding any child from actually being in proximity to a real canine?
The teenager's mom is understandably a little P.O'd at her kid's school right now. Her elder son is serving in the United States Marine Corps, and she's calling the school's prudish behavior an attack on military spirit. I'm not so sure I'd go that far. I'm betting the shirt could have had any old bulldog on it, and the teen would have gotten the same lecture.
But I do think this is another sign of the "let's shelter our kids from everything" mentality that's so pervasive in America. This was not a naked man or woman. It was an animal! There is nothing sexual about a dog's penis, or a squirrel's for that matter. We all ignore them when we see them, and so -- more or less -- do our kids. If they ask, we tell them that's part of the dog's anatomy ... and move on.
By making something naturally on display so taboo, schools aren't protecting kids. They're making it exciting. They're turning the natural into the unnatural.
It wasn't the t-shirt makers or the teenager proud of his brother's service to our country who turned the symbol of the US Marine Corps into something dirty. It was the school administrators who decided it should shock kids. And what do you want to bet that now kids are noticing doggie genitalia in a town in Mississippi?
What do you think of this school and their reaction to the bulldog shirt?
Image via sabianmaggy/Flickr
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Comments 46
<--- Navy wife. I think it's a tacky concept. Right up there with my husband's last ship using the Jack Daniels style logo for one of their divisions on a t-shirt. And... I don't want to see a dog's junk so, why would I want anyone else to have to look at it? IT's gross and disgusting and more power to the school. I'm all for freedom of speech but, tact is tact. We need to teach our children that.
It would have been helpful to have seen a photo of the actual t-shirt in order to post an accurate comment, however, going off of the post, I personally dont want to see dog testicles on a t-shirt nor would I let my child whear one in public or even to school - nature or not, disgusting. Good for the school!
PS - My son-in-law and nieces husband are in the Marines and NEITHER of them would allow their children to wear something like that.
I just spent 7 minutes (which I can never get back) doing a Google image search of "Marine Corps bulldog" and "Marine Corps bulldog tshirt" and, though I looked at hundreds of images and actually clicked on and enlarged several dozen that weren't just the bulldog's head, I saw not one iota of genitalia of any sort. There are a few drawings that, given the angle of the dog, what is ACTUALLY the far rear foot could be, if you squint, are puritanical and paranoid to the extreme and have a predilection for gutter thoughts MAYBE could be mistaken for a wee glimpse of a tiny teste but, other than that, I could find nothing. Either way, I think that the administrators are likely the sort of squinty eyed, gutter thinkers that would have mistaken the dog's toe for his teste and overreacted. Sheesh.