From ‘Poster with CHIJ logo ‘insulting’: school chairperson’, 18 Jan 2012, article by Jeanette Tan, sg.yahoo news.
A poster featuring a naughty message has scandalised some people from the Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus (CHIJ) schools in Singapore. The large circular poster, which depicted the school’s crest at its centre, included a caption in bold capitals that read: “In need of a one night stand: CHIJ girls please stand up!”
…Its (CHIJ board of management) chairperson, Vivienne Lim, told the paper that the unauthorised use of the school’s logo in the poster was “highly inappropriate and demeaning”, adding that it was “insulting” for “thousands of CHIJ alumni and current CHIJ students, some of whom are as young as six years old.”
The poster is believed to have been created as a decorative part of a school-themed party held at Filter Members Club, a nightspot located near Mohamed Sultan Road, last Saturday, alongside a similar one featuring the Anglo-Chinese School logo carrying the caption: “In need of a sugar daddy: Where my AC boys at?”
…“I think it’s highly offensive and ridiculous,” said Kimberly Gwee, 17, who graduated from CHIJ Toa Payoh (Secondary) a year ago. She felt that the poster slandered the names of both CHIJ and ACS. “Each school (CHIJ and ACS) already has bad publicity from rumours that circulate from generation to generation, but this is a whole new level of offence… to slander CHIJ’s name with sexual slurs is really too much.”
20-year-old Isabel Francis, another CHIJ alumnus, agreed, saying that the poster implies that girls who are or were from CHIJ are sleazy. “It’s so in your face; I’m not sure why no one is suing yet,” she added.
Can't Help It, Joking
Holy Infant Jesus! Using the CHIJ crest to promote a dress-up event is not so much insulting to alumni as it is corny and unimaginative. Filter club should know better than to question the chastity of CHIJ girls, hinting not just at naughty cosplay kinkiness, but paedophilia as well. There are, of course, many ways of promoting a ‘Back to school’ theme, and even if AC boys don’t mind being referred to as sugar daddies who drive desperate CHIJ girls about in Daddy’s car, brandishing a prestigious school brand renown for its absetemious preachings is just asking for it. It’s like draping Dora the explorer in lingerie.
This also isn’t the first time CHIJ fiercely defended its squeaky-clean, God fearing, girl-next-door image. You know they mean business when they take action even against the national paper, not to mention a club. In 2006, the board threatened to sue SPH, in particular the Sunday Times for a ‘tongue-in-cheek’ take on ‘IJ’ girls as part of an unofficial ‘Singapore Encyclopedia’, for the following defamatory sentence.
IJ girls is a generalisation for girls who study in CHIJ schools and who like to hem their school uniforms real short, wear their belts real low on their hips, and are allegedly EASY when it comes to the opposite sex.
Chairperson at the time Donna Marie Aeria again made reference to the many ’6 year olds’ damaged by this shameful stereotype. She also happens to be trained as a lawyer, not a nun. (Incidentally, the current IJ board does have a couple of nuns, but twice as many MEN). In the same offending article, there was a cartoon of a ‘chain-smoking sarong party girl’, according to a proud parent of a CHIJ student in the Royal Ballet Academy. Nowhere in the ST paragraph above was SPG hinted at, and sometimes it only takes a backfiring complaint from an uptight parent to perpetuate a myth that wasn’t even there in the first place.
But any school, convent or otherwise, would have its share of ‘good girls gone bad’. In 2000, it was reported that 6 CHIJ Toa Payoh girls were arrested for suspected drug-taking within school premises (6 arrested CHIJ girls sent for drug tests, 5 July 2000). 2 years later, another group of CHIJ girls were caught consuming ketamine in the school toilet (Schoolgirls admit to using drugs, 16 Dec 2002). Serial shoplifter and former CHIJ girl Goh Lee Yin was caught for stealing items ranging from canned fruit to jelly powder WHILE ON BAIL. Not quite close to the slut stereotype, but one particular former CHIJ girl and now based in LA actress named Gwyendoline Yeo (she’s the NIECE of George Yeo) did state for the record that she ‘wouldn’t mind playing Singaporean porn starlet Annabel Chong in a movie’. The latter was from RGS, not CHIJ. Praise the lord.
But the only reason why people take notice when CHIJ girls make the news whenever they get into trouble is because they ARE from CHIJ, a proud unit founded on all things holy and virtuous that anything so much as a student winking at a boy is frowned upon, a position which is ripe for double standards. Last year, a CHIJ teacher dressed up as Lady GIGI to perk up her lessons, an obvious reference to Lady GAGA, a celebrity known for her dazzling style but also obnoxious blasphemy. The Lady herself also openly embraces homosexual and transgender lovin’ in ‘Born this Way’, not something that IJ teachers would like their flock to ‘stand up’ for.
This is a Convent, for God’s sake, with very powerful leaders who put their wagging fingers to litigious use whenever one dares besmirch the school crest or does fetishistic things to used uniforms (like posing as a schoolgirl and selling them online) Hell hath no fury like women from Infant Jesus scorned, and anyone who insists on gracing Filter’s Vice Convent event in an IJ uniform risks getting their ears pulled.
