Clinton’s Nomination Unearths 1995 T-Shirt Controversy
Thursday night saw Hillary Clinton officially accept the Democratic Party’s nomination for president. The historic occasion has kicked up a two-decade-old t-shirt controversy.
In 1995 a Walmart store in Florida began selling a shirt featuring Dennis The Menace character Margaret saying “Someday a woman will be PRESIDENT.” The shirt, which was designed by psychologist Ann Moliver Ruben as a way to inspire young girls, was pulled from the store after a customer complained.
According to an Associated Press story at the time, “A Walmart spokeswoman said the company stopped selling the shirts at the only store that had them after one customer complained.”
The story came back to light this week when Professor Nick Kapur began tweeting out free shots of 1995 press-clippings about the incident. A later story from December 1995 announced that the shirt had been restocked after Walmart announced that they’d “overreacted.” The company went as far as to hold a “welcome back” party for the shirt, ordering 30,000 of them for stores across the country.
In 1995 Walmart pulled "Someday a woman will be president" T-shirt from shelves, saying it offended "family values." pic.twitter.com/jqqbmZFMCa
— Nick Kapur (@nick_kapur) July 27, 2016
In response to the story coming back to prominence, Walmart released a statement to Mashable. Danit Marquardt, Walmart’s Director of Corporate Communications, said, “Wow, it still pains us that we made this mistake 20 years ago. We’re proud of the fact that our country – and our company – has made so much progress in advancing women in the workplace, and in society.”
