Recently a Brooklyn woman started a petition against a girl's shirt being sold at JC Penney that displays the message: "I'm Too Pretty To Do Homework (So My Brother Has To Do It For Me)." The shirt is aimed at girls ages 7 to 16 years old, in the year 2011, nearly 100 years after the 19th Amendment was ratified, and women were deemed smart enough to vote and get jobs and... stuff... wait, sorry, we just got distracted by a shiny thing. more ›

A U.S. Postal Service employee who worked in the Corona, Queens facility was arrested for stealing department store coupons and selling them online. According to the Post, "Thomas Tang, 38, of Baldwin, Long Island, allegedly pilfered more than 7,000 coupons from JCPenney, Kohl's and Lowe's and sold them in batches on" eBay—he estimated he made about $35,000 between October 2009 and this month just on the JC Penney coupons. And what drove him to this desperate act? more ›

Lighting designer Nikolaos Willmore, 44, was arrested yesterday and charged with sexually assaulting an 11-year-old girl inside the midtown JC Penney. Police say Willmore followed the victim around the store in the Manhattan Mall on Saturday afternoon and fondled her. The girl then told her mother, who chased Willmore out of the store. more ›

It's been a week and a half since the NY Times published a bitchy review of Manhattan's first J.C. Penney, penned by columnist Cintra Wilson (pictured). She received plenty of unkind words in return for her barrage of insults about the average American woman and her size 12 style. Last week, she declared on her blog that the issue has been "flame-broiled to death" (a nod to the fast food nation she targeted?), but yesterday the Gray Lady gave her a lexical slap on the wrist. more ›

JC Penney has arrived in Herald Square, leaving locals disaffected and tourists hurling towards a familiar sight. Is Penney's our TGIFriday's of retail? The NY Times reports on the department store's new digs, look and goods with, dare we say, a biting tone that's less becoming than a plethora of polysynthetics. Miss Size 2 reporter guesstimates that 96% of the inventory is made of polyester, and it's nearly impossible to find anything below a size 10. She adds, "it has the most obese mannequins I have ever seen. They probably need special insulin-based epoxy injections just to make their limbs stay on. It’s like a headless wax museum devoted entirely to the cast of Roseanne.” Hopefully there are enough airbrushed magazine covers out there to combat this, lest little girls grow up thinking it's okay to be anything more than a size 2. more ›

Animal lovers everywhere can consider themselves victorious. One small step was made for the anti-fur set, as the Humane Society of the US's president announced that, "JCPenney, with more than 1,000 stores in 49 states, has become fur-free, making it the first multiple location, traditional department store to be fur-free in stores and on its website. The company is currently fur-free and has no plans for fur items in the future." Racked is skeptical however, and thinks that the store's motives "can't be completely golden; we're sure the current economy's effects on both shopper's budgets and store bottom lines played major parts in the decision." Earlier this year the HSUS called out some other NYC department stores for mislabeling their fur products. JCPenney will be opening their Manhattan Mall store this summer, and maybe the PETA strippers will be doing their shopping there. more ›