Urban Outfitters' drinking shirts are a very American dilemma

Okay, I kind of made fun of Canadian yokeltude in my last post, but now I get to be smug.

The shirts above are from Urban Outfitters. And people are upset about it.

Here's how Steve Hall at Adrants summarized:

Mothers Against Drunk Driving President Jan Withers told the New York Times, "As a mother, these shirts are not acceptable for children under the age of 21. If they're targeting that audience, then they're sending the message that it's cool to drink. We know of the dangers of underage drinking and the fact that it's just downright illegal." 

With Urban Outfitters customer base mostly 18-24, much of this outrage may be warranted. Is this just harmless fun or does Urban Outfitters need a good spanking?

Is this a good place to mention that making the legal drinking age 21 is fucking ridiculous? At 18, you can vote, go to jail, sign contracts, and go to war. And you are not mature enough to have a goddamn beer?

Admittedly, here in Ontario, we are also inconsistent with age of majority. I would happily vote to have it reduced from 19 to 18 any day, even if it means more DITs (drinkers in training) in the bars.

Frig, I let my 8-year-old son wear a beer logo cap to school, and they didn't even say anything. To be fair, it's in a pretty nice neighbourhood, and rich people drink a lot. Hell, one day I saw a kid's lunch packed in a  reusable liquor store bag.

Anyway, all this to say that these shirts are mostly harmless. Teens wear much worse things than this. Way worse.

If I had a teenage daughter, I wouldn't really mind if she wore the "drinking team" or "vodka" shirts — except that I would question her taste. (The "I drink you're cute" one is sort of funny, but the message isn't the greatest indicator of high standards in men.)

If we want to get up-in-arms about shirts sold by Urban Outfitters, forget MADD's rantings about booze.  I have a much more troublesome from the same catalogue:

It says "no reason to say no." What a bad idea that is.

Then there's this:

Ummm...