Rude New T-shirt. Seriously Rude. **UPDATED**

A blog I read recently posted about how offensive this new sale item is. I actually hesitate slightly to post it because I don't want to give this company's website any additional traffic. Now, I'm not particularly savvy about fashion trends, or really any trends for that matter. So I had to ask my much cooler, hipper co-workers what this means. Here's the item for sale:

So this is a reference to fashion, apparently. "Black" is very trendy and hip in fashion (so I'm told), and when new styles or colors are "in," people say they are "the new black." As in: Green is the new black.

Hmm. So why would Urban Outfitters think adopting is the new black? Because Angelina Jolie and Madonna have recently received a lot of publicity for doing it? That's a lame reason, if you ask me (and clearly Urban Outfitters didn't). Because, truth be told, celebrities have been adopting for years and years and years. Decades, even. Look at Mia Farrow, who has ten children through adoption. Or Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. Or Calista Flockhart. Or Meg Ryan. Need I go on? The fact that there has been a lot of publicity about it recently-- does that make the act of adopting a trendy activity? Or even newsworthy, for that matter?

I mean, I've always kind of thought that if Angelina could expedite an adoption because of her celebrity-- or if she could draw attention to the plight of children in Africa or Cambodia or wherever, then good for her for using her star power for something good.

But I've never thought any of those celebrities adopted because they wanted good publicity. I cannot imagine anyone adopting a child so that people will pat her on the back and tell her what a good things she is doing. That's just not what adoption is about. It's not about "saving" a child. Adoption is about creating family. Adoption is about love.

So you can imagine why equating adoption with some fashion trend would be, well, offensive to anyone who has or is adopted. And that's a lotta people. So, if you feel so inclined, and would like to let Urban Outfitters know their misguided attempt at humor is . . . less than funny . . . please e-mail them at service@urbanoutfitters.com.

**UPDATE**

To those of you who have e-mailed me and posted comments about this, thank you. To those of you who have written to UO, thank you, thank you. You can see in the comments that Kyndra let me know UO is no longer selling the item. Which is great news. Now I think it's time for them to take the image off their website, though, don't you? (Yeah, I know it's weird for me to say this seeing as I have a picture of it on this blog. But I'll remove it when they do.)