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Feminist slogan T-shirts - why are they impossible to get right? Feminist slogan T-shirts - why are they impossible to get right?
(about 17 hours later)
With sloganeering generally, context matters; with feminist sloganeering, in particular, context definitely matters, especially when that context is a T-shirt. Meryl Streep’s shirtwear has been the latest to combust. It read: “I’d rather be a rebel than a slave”, a quote from a speech in 1913 by Emmeline Pankhurst. Carey Mulligan, Romola Garai and Anne-Marie Duff were also wearing it, promoting their film Suffragette, but that defence – “Look over there, they did it, too” – doesn’t cut much ice when you’re Meryl. Or indeed, anyone else older than seven. With sloganeering generally, context matters; with feminist sloganeering, in particular, context definitely matters, especially when that context is a T-shirt. Meryl Streep’s shirtwear has been the latest to combust. It read: “I’d rather be a rebel than a slave”, a quote from a speech in 1913 by Emmeline Pankhurst. Carey Mulligan, Romola Garai and Anne-Marie Duff were also wearing it, promoting their film Suffragette, but that defence – “Look over there, they did it, too” – doesn’t cut much ice when you’re Meryl. Or indeed, anyone else older than seven.
I’m ambivalent about whether or not this was an insult to the memory of the historical victims of slavery, which is what ignited the row. Plainly, to cite the condition of being enslaved as the ultimate human debasement, when the debasement resides in the act of enslaving another, is egregious. But that’s an act of revision: slavery as refracted through Pankhurst’s cultural reference set was a metaphor for the removal of agency and dignity. You wouldn’t want to lose the historical record of her fierceness so that she conformed to thinking that post-dated her, any more than you’d want to lose Billie Holiday’s Long Gone Blues (“I’ve been your slave / Ever since I’ve been your babe”).I’m ambivalent about whether or not this was an insult to the memory of the historical victims of slavery, which is what ignited the row. Plainly, to cite the condition of being enslaved as the ultimate human debasement, when the debasement resides in the act of enslaving another, is egregious. But that’s an act of revision: slavery as refracted through Pankhurst’s cultural reference set was a metaphor for the removal of agency and dignity. You wouldn’t want to lose the historical record of her fierceness so that she conformed to thinking that post-dated her, any more than you’d want to lose Billie Holiday’s Long Gone Blues (“I’ve been your slave / Ever since I’ve been your babe”).
But that is the first thing your T-shirt has no room for, however big your chest: ambivalence. And along those lines, you have no room, either, to be anything less than perfect; hence the last feminist T-shirt controversy, when it was alleged that the “This is what a feminist looks like” T-shirt was made in sweatshop conditions, by women who could sorely use some more meaningful sisterhood. This turned out to be untrue, according to the Fawcett Society, which insisted the shirts were made ethically. But the muck did the job, and you don’t see people wearing them any more, let alone at prime minister’s questions. Just by recalling the existence of sweatshops, the accusation attached a tawdriness to the garment, a reminder that, in the end, this was just another act of consumption, a bought badge of honour. But that is the first thing your T-shirt has no room for, however big your chest: ambivalence. And along those lines, you have no room, either, to be anything less than perfect; hence the last feminist T-shirt controversy, when it was alleged that the “This is what a feminist looks like” T-shirt was made in sweatshop conditions, by women who could sorely use some more meaningful sisterhood. This turned out to be untrue, according to the Fawcett Society, which insisted the shirts were made ethically. But the muck did the job, and you don’t see people wearing them any more, let alone at prime minister’s questions. Just by recalling the existence of sweatshops, the accusation attached a tawdriness to the garment, a reminder that, in the end, this was just another act of consumption, a bought badge of honour.
Related: The Suffragettes: now a major motion picture (and a T-shirt) | Catherine ShoardRelated: The Suffragettes: now a major motion picture (and a T-shirt) | Catherine Shoard
There is a deeper problem, though, than the contradiction of making a sincere political statement out of shopping. It’s an act of bad faith, to take this private thing – your own body – and use it as a billboard. You’re trying to have it both ways, to annex public space for the promulgation of your own views, while at the same time maintaining a kind of teenage “What? It’s just a T-shirt” defiance. This is why arguments around them erupt so frequently. If you walked down a road carrying a banner, even if you were Meryl Streep, it would be different. You would be using the public realm more openly, and there would be more scope, in consequence, for you to say something that the whole world didn’t agree with. Note: people might call you weird, however. There is a deeper problem, though, than the contradiction of making a sincere political statement out of shopping. It’s an act of bad faith, to take this private thing – your own body – and use it as a billboard. You’re trying to have it both ways, to annex public space for the promulgation of your own views, while at the same time maintaining a kind of teenage “What? It’s just a T-shirt” defiance. This is why arguments around them erupt so frequently. If you walked down a road carrying a banner, even if you were Meryl Streep, it would be different. You would be using the public realm more openly, and there would be more scope, in consequence, for you to say something that the whole world didn’t agree with. Note: people might call you weird, however.