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"  All it took was one pass by a tween/teen clothing store for all that was wrong with seventh grade to come rushing back to me. There it was in the front window, a T-shirt that read: &amp;quot;Hating me won&amp;#039;t make you pretty.&amp;quot; And suddenly, I wanted my own rebuttal T-shirt: &amp;quot;Yeah, but it&amp;#039;ll make me want to poke your eyes out.&amp;quot; The Mean Girls have taken over the mall, and I&amp;#039;m not talking about the posse of middle schoolers standing outside Abercrombie, texting each other. I mean on the clothes for sale. Right next to the T-shirt proclaiming, &amp;quot;Peace, &amp;quot; there&amp;#039;s the &amp;quot;Did you eat a bowl of stupid?&amp;quot; And it&amp;#039;s not just at the stores that sell gag gifts like fake dog poo or &amp;quot;Terry the Swearing Turtle.&amp;quot; T-shirts emblazoned with insults are sold at the same girls&amp;#039; clothing stores that offer nightgowns with pink hearts all over them. So much for sugar and spice and everything nice. Mean has gone mainstream. No wonder our schools have anti-bullying programs these days. You don&amp;#039;t even have to say anything to intimidate other kids. Heading to the football game? Just wear your T-shirt that reads: &amp;quot;If a fat girl falls in the woods and no one&amp;#039;s there to hear it, do the trees laugh?&amp;quot; For only 14 bucks, your clothing will take care of the bullying for you. Certainly, bullying is nothing new. I remember being horrified as I watched a group of boys follow a classmate they suspected was gay through the halls of my high school one afternoon, taunting him. Eventually, a teacher stopped the mob, and the mean boys got in trouble. But not until the damage was done. Nowadays, however, bullies can fly under the radar, harassing classmates on MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter and through texts. That boy who was chased through my high school would today be cyber-stalked with an unflattering photo posted and passed along from kid to kid, along with the very F-word that landed those boys in detention. Surely, there&amp;#039;s a T-shirt to match somewhere at the mall. And while parents and teachers can&amp;#039;t be everywhere, especially on the Internet, to thwart bullying, we can discourage kids from wearing mean T-shirts. Better yet, kids can. After a boy from Ontario was harassed for wearing a pink T-shirt on the first day of school, students in Canada started their own anti-bullying program by wearing pink T-shirts and holding up signs that read: Don&amp;#039;t be a bully: Have a cookie. Now there&amp;#039;s something I&amp;#039;d like to see on a T-shirt. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/parenting/a22065/mean-goes-mainstream/?src=shelter_footer>