As of last night, there's finally a female POTUS candidate, all thanks to Hillary Clinton's win of the Democratic party's nomination for president. Unfortunately, there are plenty of people out there that aren't okay with the idea of a female president. Still, this blast from the past (nearly 20 years ago, technically) is still jaw-dropping.
In 1995, during Bill Clinton's presidency, the T-shirt pictured, printed with, "Someday a woman will be PRESIDENT!" above a Dennis The Menace character, was stocked at a Walmart in Arkansas. But the shirt, designed by Ann Ruben, a 70-year-old psychologist in Florida, was pulled off shelves before it was more widely available at the big-box retailer. A picture of the shirt was unearthed by Rutgers University professor Nick Kapur, who shared it on Twitter. Today, The Telegraph reported on it.
An Associated Press article, which Kapur linked to in his tweets, detailed the retailer's reasoning for pulling the shirt. The article reads: "Ruben said Sharon Higginbotham, a buyer for women’s clothes at Walmart’s national office in Bentonville, Ark., told her the store would not carry the shirt nationwide because the message 'goes against Walmart’s family values.'" The tee and its lighthearted-yet-feminist message did not sit well with certain customers, apparently: “It was determined the T-shirt was offensive to some people and so the decision was made to pull it from the sales floor."
A Walmart spokesperson reached out to Jezebel after it wrote about the shirt to share the following statement: “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.”
So, are you surprised this shirt got nixed not even two decades ago? Let us know in the comments.