Political Tees

All T-shirts are (small 'p') Political...

Wearing a T-shirt is often a great indicator of where you are (small 'P') politically, and this doesn't mean your shirt need have the ubiquitous Che Guevara emblazoned across it. (Great Super Furry Animals lyric: He was an asthma sufferer / Like Ernesto Guevara - and it rhymes!) Anyway, tees have a great history of being symbolically anti-establishment and have the reputation of being the clothing of choice for the vast majority of counter-cultures.

Let's simplify things: tshirts have always been 'cool', and not to be worn by 'squares' - and this is still true today. See the evidence:

  1. Exhibit A: The multi-millionaire Peter Jones was seen to have forty fits when any budding entrepreneur came onto the BBC's Dragons' Den and dared ask for investment whilst wearing a teeshirt.
  2. Exhibit B: Superintendent Chalmers, of The Simpsons fame, shows delicious outrage when Principal Skinner asks if he would like to wear a T-shirt. Chalmers replies, with some sarcasm: "Why don't I just wear a sandwich board with 'male prostitute' written on it?"

Rebel With a Tee

The origins of this trend - the tee as political dynamite - can be found in our potted history of the T-shirt - part 2. But, long story short: the tee was originally an underwear garment in the early twentieth century. But in the nineteen-fifties, the world's first (American) teenagers wanted to rebel against the soaring post-war prosperity their parents and their country was enjoying. Sporting the tee-shirt - a cheap, austere piece of clothing - was the perfect way to symbolically show dissatisfaction in an economic boom-time. (Similarly, counter-culturists wore dour leather, faded denim and moth-eaten CND T-shirts in the otherwise shamelessly extravagant eighties.) This fashion of the T-shirt as a flag for angsty youth was reinforced when James Dean and Marlon Brando, two revolutionary young actors, made the plain-white tee famous in the movies: Dean in Rebel Without a Cause and Brando in Streetcar Named Desire. (The introduction of graphic art on a tee came with the psychedelic sixties.)

T-Shirts of the World Unite

So there you have it: tees are the fashion of rebellion. They are the proud uniform of youth. T-shirts are for the perennial cool kids to wear, and are pieces of clothing the establishment (business and government = The Man) just can't ever seem to 'get'. Here's some extremely valid (and not just thought up) points to prove this:

  1. They don't let you wear T-shirts on golf courses. (Well, they do at the charming and public Barnsley Golf Club, but they don't at the expensive, snobby ones.)
  2. I've never seen Rupert Murdoch in a T-shirt.
  3. They don't let you wear tees to school. (Well, they never did at my school anyway - it was blazer, tie, etc. I looked like Bert Millichip, God rest his soul.)
  4. We rarely see British Members of Parliament in tshirts and, even when we do, it's usually for some awkward PR stunt - and they are looking very silly and uncomfortable. (See also: former Conservative leader William Hague and his infamous baseball cap.)

Remember, it's Us Vs Them - and Us wear the tees. (Them wear some kind of designer cashmere polo-shirt. Not good!)