DONT Put That on a T-shirt

By: Tabitha Murdoch

Fast fashion is bad enough already. The trend cycle is spinning so fast its coming off the wheel and the latest target of micro-trend mania: the slogan tee.

While fast fashion and its environmental consequences are far greater than this sub-section of the issue, and of course shirts with trendy text or cultural slang is not a new trend. But in a world redefined by internet culture, the text being chosen to print is becoming increasingly…problematic.

Online shop listing

This trend, specifically targeting young women, promotes often misogynistic and degrading terms by taking jokes and slang out of its original context.  “Girl Math” or “nepo baby” for example, weren’t necessarily inherently ill-intentioned when created and used in the context they are intended. “Girl math” for example refers to how people, often femme presenting, will use big leaps in logic to justify financial decisions for their benefit.

But now, when printed on a shirt, without any other context, not only does it not make sense, but it is ridiculing women and making light of how girls are so often undermined and disrespected for their presumed “inadequate” decision making.

Also, it just looks bad.

Why would anyone want a shirt that says “nepo baby ”? the term is used almost exclusively online to undermine the achievement of celebrity’s who come from affluent or well-connected backgrounds, an often times valid complaint about how the entertainment industry works but just as often used, once more in reference to women, who online trolls believe do not deserve their success because they don’t see their value or worth.

In what context would someone who shops at Universal store buy a shirt that says that? An actual nepo-baby wouldn’t be caught dead in it, and why would someone who isn’t a product of nepotism want to tell people otherwise.

Again, it also looks bad.

When corporations and companies use sayings or slang to sell products, the meaning behind them no longer exists because the people seeing the products are no longer participants in online sub culture who know the roots and joke behind the trend.

So no, big name stores are NOT in on the joke, in fact, they just killed the joke and now an entire shipment of size xs tacky baby tees are taking up space in landfill.