Fourteen-year-old Liz Clark of Fox Chapel, Pa., says that T-shirts sold by Abercrombie & Fitch are demeaning and offensive to girls. That's why she and other members of the Allegheny County Girls as Grantmakers group, which helps raise money for girls' causes, urged their friends and fellow students not to buy the shirts.

The T-shirts from the popular retailer have been the subject of boycotts by female students (who call them "girlcotts") in Illinois, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania. The students don't like the messages emblazoned across the front of the shirts. Some of the more tame examples of the printed text are "Blondes Are Adored, Brunettes Are Ignored" and "I Make You Look Fat."

Abercrombie & Fitch has responded to the students by pulling two of the shirts deemed most derogatory from some store shelves. The store's press release stated, "We recognize that the shirts in question, while meant to be humorous, might be troubling to some."

Not So Funny

Jettie Fields, 13, a member of the Girls as Grantmakers group, isn't laughing. She thinks the slogans on the shirts pit girls against one another. "We would not want anyone to exploit us, so why are we exploiting ourselves?" she told the Today show.

When students involved in the Peace Project, an antidiscrimination student club in Norwalk, Conn., heard about the girlcott, they joined in Hannah Wimpfheimer, a junior at Brien McMahon High School and a member of the Peace Project, told The Advocate of Norwalk, "These are shirts that insult girls and make them look ditzy and stupid. It isn't right."