I needed something
lighter after yesterday.
Back in July I had
a week of posts with anniversaries of certain books. That was somewhat
coincidental. I happened to read articles about them, and while one had been
from the previous year (which is why we had 51 Years of Silent Spring),
it was just something that seemed kind of cool. It led to me reading two that I
had always meant to read anyway, and re-reading one.
At about the same
time that I was reading those articles, I also saw one on the anniversary of
the T-shirt, and I had thought about writing something there, but I ended up
focusing on the books. Now the T-shirt gets its chance.
There is not a hard
creation date. Somewhere between the Spanish American War and 1913 they started
being made, but 1913 was when they really took off, when the US Navy started
issuing them.
My first big
T-Shirt memory was reading in a history class that T-Shirt sales plummeted,
after Clark Gable takes off his shirt and reveals a bare chest in the 1934 film
It Happened One Night. I found that fascinating, and wondered how long
the impact lasted. I later found out it took about a year for sales to recover,
but it took me a long time to find that data. Before that I joked with my
teacher that it probably required James Dean. My teacher paused for one beat,
and then retorted that Dean just needed some place to keep his cigarettes.
The transition to
outerwear was important, and it was around that time period (50s and 60s) that
you start getting designs and messages so that T-shirts become souvenirs and
statements, and band merchandise.
That's a big part
of why I thought I might write about T-shirts. A lot of these kids are really
into wearing these. Some of them do have pretty cool designs, and it works as a
statement of affiliation. This is what I like and this is who I am. Sadly, I
cannot wear them.
Well, I can - I
just look horrible in them. They do not suit my body at all. They feel
constrictive (it's the round neck) and confining, and it's hard to make me look
any dumpier, but somehow they do. No matter how much I want to support a band,
this is just not the way for me. However, it is not just bands that use
T-Shirts, and thus I have a large collection.
This could be much
worse, because I have cleared out a lot. When I was working at Intel, it seems
like every product launch resulted in a new T-Shirt. They would fill up my
closet until it reached critical mass, and then be donated.
It is still the premier
way of easily marking volunteers. I have let a few Blues Fest shirts go, but I
still have two here. This was my first year of volunteering at Stumptown, but I
expect to repeat that. And while that one Regence volunteer shirt looks pretty
similar to the one I had the year before, I will probably be required to wear a
new but really similar one for this volunteer thing I am doing next month. I
get it; when you are herding volunteers at a large event, it helps to have them
all dressed alike. Now I have a new way of acquiring shirts, via crowdsourcing.
I will probably
have a few posts on crowdsourcing itself later, but right now you can see one
Veronica Mars T-Shirt (that says it is large, but clearly is not), one for
Reggie and the Full Effect, and a hoodie for Dear White People.
I don't really do
well in hoodies and sweatshirts either, probably through the same principles.
In this case, I'm not sure it matters. They did say. realizing that it is a
little "in your face" to tell people not to worry, it's just a movie.
That sounds reasonable, but I feel in my case, being very white, that I would
not only look aggressive, but also like a total poser. Also, I would look dumpy
and feel confined, so there is that too.
I'm just hanging on
to them for now. I know someone who combined her love of running with her love
of quilting and turned race shirts into quilts, but that's not really me. (I
did not put my Shamrock Run shirt in the photo, because it's kind of a
different style, but it looks bad on me too.)
It's strange to
observe this change in me. My yearbook picture one year in junior high had me
wearing a pullover vest that I had gotten at the A-ha concert with the dog tag
I had gotten at the Charlie Sexton concert. To be fair, the vest wasn't particularly
flattering either, but I still wore it, because I had been to concerts! Both my
favorite acts in the same summer!
I guess now I feel
like the way I show my affiliation is putting in the volunteer time, or making
the pledges, and it's important to me to not look worse than I absolutely have
to. So, I feel like I really don't need more shirts, but I am pretty sure I am
going to get them.
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