That time Walmart got offended by the idea of a female president

Last night, Hillary Clinton became the first woman in America’s 240-year history to win the presidential nomination from a major political party. “It was determined the T-shirt was offensive to some people”, a Wal-Mart spokesperson said in a throwback Associated Press article tweeted by Rutgers University professor Nick Kapur.

Shortly after Bill Clinton’s speech about Hillary, Rutgers professor Nick Kapur tweeted a very freaky, very true story from 1995: the time Walmart removed a feminist T-shirt from its stores for offending “family values”.

The store, which was located in Miramar, had sold about two-thirds of its 204 shirts in about two weeks, and was about to order 100 more when the customer complained.

It was about a Wal-Mart in Miami that took a T-shirt off its shelves after a customer complained about an “offensive” slogan. She told the AP Walmart was sending a clear message by pulling it from its racks – one that suggests “promoting females as leaders is still a very threatening concept in this country”.

The shirt was designed by Ann Moliver Ruben, then-president of Women Are Wonderful Inc., an organization aiming to empower girls and young women. Ruben sent Clinton a shirt when her first granddaughter, Charlotte, was born in 2014.

According to the shirt’s designer, Wal-Mart HQ also refused to carry the shirts nationwide, because the message went “against Wal-Mart’s family values”. A company from Medley in Northwest Dade is printing the T-shirts.

It was eventually taken off again – because Walmart said it didn’t do well, the paper reported.

“I’m still concerned about the underlying belief that caused them to pull it, ” said group member Ameli Padron-Fragetta of Miami, who has boycotted the store since the incident. “It has nothing to do with politics”. It was just a cute T-shirt.

In 2011, Ruben left Florida to return to her native Pittsburgh.

“And, if there are any little girls out there who stayed up late to watch”, said Clinton on Tuesday night.

Banned T-shirt predictions don’t often come true.