clothes/fashion

This might be a useful image for talking about the commodification of protest and “alternative” culture. It was being sold at the H&M store in Pasadena. It’s the latest in a progression of the co-opting of the punk aesthetic–first stores like Hot Topic started selling clothing with rips and safety pins and such in them, so you could go pay a lot of money for pre-packaged punk or goth looks. Now it’s gone a step further where they no longer even bother to put a real safety pin in–now you just get pictures of safety pins, meant to evoke that sense of non-conformity in the safest, most easily-marketed way possible, along with your Sum 41 (or whatever their name is) CD.

Dehumanizing women; women as toys, useful only for fucking; women as interchangeable:

By the way, on the back it says: “Isn’t that why women have more than one hole?”

Here it is in a pillowcase:

Different take, same message:

Trivialization of rape:

Glamorization of violent sex and the priviliging of men’s sexual pleasure:

Trivialization of relationship violence:

This last one says: “I like my women like my chicken, battered.”

30% of the retail price of these shirts will be donated to “some of the country’s best charities. What better excuse to go shopping?” The retail price is $68. The charities are:

Women in Need
Free Arts NYC
Rape Treatment Center at Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center
National Multiple Sclerosis Society
Children’s Hope India
American Refugee Committee’s Darfur Relief Effort

I like these kinds of things because they bring up two issues: Why don’t people just contribute $20 (or, in most cases, something like 10 cents) directly instead of filtering it through a corporation? And should we have to personally get something out of it in order to contribute to worthy causes?

For other examples, look here, here, and here.

This t-shirt was available from Delia’s, a mail-order catalog that targets girls between the ages of 12 and 15. They stopped selling it after some complaints.