(Just went back to read the original article and realised it was written on the 14th of september... so this reponse is a little delayed, my bad)
This post is in response to controversy over a pair of Topman tshirts that have been labelled 'sexist'. If you would like to read the original article first you can find it here, just remember to click the back button in your browser when you're done there!
The first tshirt, which has probably caused more uproar than the other is the pillar box red tshirt that starts with 'I'm sorry but' and the lists a variety of excuses. The most shocking being 'you provoked me'. The reason this tshirt is the worse of the two is that this had led people to assume it's about domestic violence. Honestly, if I had looked at this tshirt for a week solid I would not have arrived at that conclusion. Clearly, that wasn't the intended context for this tshirt, not even Topman would cross that line. Don't get me wrong, if people are going to be hypersensitive about anything it should be an issue like domestic violence because it can so easily go unnoticed. But let's not demonise Topman to quickly.
When I look at this tshirt I see something much more lighthearted and witty than that. When I read this tshirt I thought of really innocent household errors that a stereotypical man is likely to make - putting a red sock in with a pretty white dress or knocking the most expensive perfume over when in a stress about losing the car keys. 'Yeah, okay, but this doesn't explain why on earth you think it's witty?!' Well look at the order of the excuses, if the first one 'you provoked me' was true, it would be the most justified, but as your read down the tshirt they get more and more ridiculous ending with 'I couldn't help it'. This suggests to me, in quite a clever and witty way, that most of the time when a guy messes up it's normally because of one of the stupid reasons at the bottom of the tshirt.
Okay, so maybe I'm over analysing the design of this tshirt, but I really don't think that I would be the only one guilty of that.
The second tshirt is a much more straightforward objectification of women, 'nice new girlfriend, what breed is she?' The great thing about this tshirt is that if a guy was wearing this it would be like a warning to prospective girlfriends to stay away, because he's kind of a bit of a fool. The thing that gets me about this tshirt is that, yeah it suggest that I'm a dog, but actually of the two I feel more objectified by the 'sexy' underwear you can find in Topshop that a ridiculous tshirt in Topman, but because of that elusive concept of 'empowerment' no-one's starting a twitter campaign about that.
Obviously these tshirts were distasteful and it's a good thing that they are being withdrawn, but anyone who's seen the endless kitchen, or to be honest xbox, jokes on Facebook cannot deny that these tshirts were filling a niche that does exist in the market. Topman are an easy target because they're a mainstrem shop and so have to be accountable to public opinion, but there are plenty of other people that would never be convicted of their wrongs in such a highprofile way. If people are, rightly, so concerned about casual sexism then they shouldn't just be campaigning against a pair of Topman tshirts, surely they should be attempting to address the state of mind that has developed, which is the reason that such a niche exists at all.
I know that this is a controversial topic and this post is just an exploration of my response to an article I read this morning; I'm no Topman tshirt, I never intended to cause any offence.
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