SALT LAKE CITY, Utah (KUTV) - An Orem, Utah mom is not happy with a mall window display she calls "pornography." The PacSun store in Orem refused to take the offending shirts off display. So she bought every last t-shirt to force the store into making a change.
Judy Cox spent $567 on t-shirts she will admittedly never wear and hopes no one will. The t-shirts hanging on a clothes line in the PacSun window on Saturday stopped her in her tracks. Cox was shopping with her 19-year-old son when she saw the shirts in question.
"This was pushing a button, they were trying to make a statement and I don't think it's appropriate here or anywhere else where children are shopping in a mall," Cox said.
The "visual by Van Styles" Tee's at the University Mall in Orem are gone now, but you'll find similar displays at the PacSun store in Salt Lake City's Gateway Mall and across the nation. Cox was so upset she stopped to talk to a manager who she says was polite, but couldn't help.
Cox was told by the manager that they "needed to talk to corporate offices and it could take days."
That was unacceptable to Cox, so she told them she'd buy the window display. The manager said you could buy them, but the store would just replace them. Since the store had 19 shirts, at $27.98 a piece, the purchase wasn't cheap. Nearly $600 later Cox left, but it was not the end. If the store gets a new shipment this mom says she'll go back and buy them out again.
The concern she said was not in selling the shirts but displaying them in the window, she believed the shirts violate Orem's decency code. Cox said the code should match up to the state code, "If the buttocks shows without an opaque covering it's illegal. Two of these clearly cross the line," Cox stated.
Two shirts have photos of lingerie models something she admits you can see at Victoria's Secret.
She argued Victoria's Secret displays are different.
"It's a lingerie store you're not going in and purchasing a shirt with a pornographic image on the shirt. People are buying lingerie," she said.
Cox was concerned that young children could not only see, but also buy the shirts. In the end she would like to see the shirts removed from all stores and for "pornography to go away."
It "harms families and it harms cultures," she said.
Cox said she planned to return all the shirts once the city manager ruled on whether the graphic shirts can be legally displayed. She said she notified the store and PacSun corporate offices of her intentions to essentially hold the shirts hostage.
Because this all started on a Saturday and this is the end of a long holiday weekend she has not heard back. We tried contacting the store, the artist and mall management but no one returned our calls.
