SEAL BEACH : T-Shirt Sentiments Bared at Council
The great T-shirt debate continued in Seal Beach this week.
Don May, the man responsible for a shirt featuring a naked woman and a slogan proclaiming Seal Beach as “where it’s at,” brought his the shirts to display at the council meeting Monday night. But Councilwomen Gwen Forsythe and Marilyn Bruce Hastings made it clear that they don’t approve of pictures of naked women on T-shirts.
Forsythe and Hastings said that they were flooded with calls last week and that they objected to the use of the seal logo used for the city’s 75th anniversary celebration, so May redesigned the shirts to remove the seal--but the naked woman remained.
“We did not need to show that to the camera,” Forsythe said as May held the shirts up for television viewers to see. “This T-shirt is in no way what this town stands for, and I am appalled by the words Seal Beach by the picture of a naked woman.”
May told the council he had only good intentions when he designed the shirt to raise money for a Chamber of Commerce thank-you at the Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station. The picture of the naked woman came straight from the menu of the Leilani Restaurant, which he operated for 20 years, he said.
But Hastings was not satisfied by May’s explanation.
“We are a family town and we don’t like this kind of thing,” she said.
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