PB Teen early fall 2005 - It's got the fuck you, it's got the black and blue
One of my inane pleasures in scouring over the Pottery Barn Teen Catalog, which I enjoy due to its hilarious stereotyping of teenage boys and girls. Every boy's room is full of surfing gear or bikes or guitars; every girl's room is fluffier than a bunny floating in a vat of marshmallows. Usually the PB Teen catalog is full of pictures of the whitest kids in America, which makes the appearance of not one! not two! or even three! but four different African-Americans in the most recent catalog seem like the beginning of the road to enlightenment.
But what makes the PB Teen catalog so funny are the little details that reinforce the worst stereotypes about teenage jocks and prom queens. Every time there's a bookshelf in a boy's room, you'll see books like Between Boardslides and Burnout or The Cyclist's Training Bible. Every girls room has either a copy of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants or a magazine rack with the most recent issues of Cosmo Girl!, ym, and Teen Vogue on it.
These stereotypes are shown through the picture of two kids talking at their lockers. The guy's locker has a textbook in it called Earth Science. Well, that proves he's a jock, because he's taking Rocks for Jocks! The girl's locker has a copy of Math 54 in it. Well I guess PB Teen still thinks girls must find math class tough, as they've given a high school girl a 4th-5th grade textbook.
Sometimes they don't quite get their stereotypes right with hilarious results. A guy whose only books are about skateboarding, cycling, soccer, and rock music is unlikely to own Working Girl on DVD. And on his magazine racks, he has copies of Bike, Dirt, Skateboarding, and Citysports magazines. But he also has an issue of Magnet with Sleater-Kinney on the cover. Because our PB Teen hero, who doesn't have any hobbies that aren't manly or extreme, loves sitting in his room and listening to All Hands on the Bad One. Or maybe he just keeps it on display cause it'll help him get laid when a girl comes into his bedroom, which must happen often, because he's cool enough to decorate his room with PB Teen.
But what makes the PB Teen catalog so funny are the little details that reinforce the worst stereotypes about teenage jocks and prom queens. Every time there's a bookshelf in a boy's room, you'll see books like Between Boardslides and Burnout or The Cyclist's Training Bible. Every girls room has either a copy of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants or a magazine rack with the most recent issues of Cosmo Girl!, ym, and Teen Vogue on it.
These stereotypes are shown through the picture of two kids talking at their lockers. The guy's locker has a textbook in it called Earth Science. Well, that proves he's a jock, because he's taking Rocks for Jocks! The girl's locker has a copy of Math 54 in it. Well I guess PB Teen still thinks girls must find math class tough, as they've given a high school girl a 4th-5th grade textbook.
Sometimes they don't quite get their stereotypes right with hilarious results. A guy whose only books are about skateboarding, cycling, soccer, and rock music is unlikely to own Working Girl on DVD. And on his magazine racks, he has copies of Bike, Dirt, Skateboarding, and Citysports magazines. But he also has an issue of Magnet with Sleater-Kinney on the cover. Because our PB Teen hero, who doesn't have any hobbies that aren't manly or extreme, loves sitting in his room and listening to All Hands on the Bad One. Or maybe he just keeps it on display cause it'll help him get laid when a girl comes into his bedroom, which must happen often, because he's cool enough to decorate his room with PB Teen.
posted 7:50 PM
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