No more "sexist" merchandise at JC Penny?

Image: Michal Marcol / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

JC Penney CEO commits to not selling sexist merchandise in the future.
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letter from JC Penney CEO.

Dear James,

When JC Penney and Forever 21 began selling sexist shirts marketed to young girls with slogans like "Allergic to Algebra" and "I'm too pretty do to homework," we asked you to call on the corporations to make a public commitment against selling sexist merchandise in the future.

In response, JC Penney CEO Myron Ullman wrote a personal note to CREDO and our members stating that:

"[JC Penney] used this incident as a 'teachable moment' for our buying teams. I can assure you and your petitioners that our teams fully understand their responsibility in upholding the integrity of our company and share with you their commitment to ensuring better merchandise decisions in the future."

While not quite the strong public commitment we would like to see from JC Penney, it is clear that our petition reached the highest levels of management at the corporation and they know that we will continue to hold them accountable for the merchandise they sell.

Without the activism of over 120,000 CREDO Action members like you, it wouldn't have been possible for us to force JC Penney to take this concrete step of committing to make better merchandise decisions in the future.

At CREDO, we believe that activism by our members has the potential to make change — and this response by JC Penney's CEO is an example that our activism can make a difference.

We will continue to work to ensure that JC Penney upholds its commitment to us and to hold other corporations to the same standard of merchandise. And we are still urging Forever 21 to make this right. We hope that you will join us as we continue to fight against sexism at the public and corporate levels.

Thank you for speaking out and joining us in this fight. Your activism matters.

Ali Rozell, Campaign Manager
CREDO Action from Working Assets