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March 23, 2004
It's All Relative
A certain t-shirt is making West Virginia quite unhappy. Protestors claim that Abercrombie & Fitch's latest shirt, which shows the state of WV and the text "It's all relative in West Virginia," fosters the stereotype of "West Virginia as a haven for incest."
Poor West Virginia. People keep sticking it to 'em. In January, someone put the entire state up for auction on eBay. Oddly, the state received 56 bids and an ante of almost 100 million dollars-- only 20 million short of their projected fiscal '05 deficit.
This has been a bad year for poor judgment and t-shirts. A few months ago, Urban Outfitters was dumb enough to market a "Voting is for Old People" t-shirt. I'm curious if regular Virginia will start protesting their own 'Virginia is for Lovers" shirts soon-- after all, doesn't "lovers" have a homosexual connotation? Oh wait, it would have to say "Virginia is for Legally Married Lovers" for people to get all up in arms. My bad.
Speaking of tasteless/fun t-shirts, I wonder how Jesus, Hungary, and Turkey feel about Cotton Factory's t-shirts. Personally, I'm diggin' the Corey Feldman Center of the Arts.
Posted by callalillie at March 23, 2004 6:58 AM | WTF?
you know who would love that shirt on the right, right?
Posted by: tien at March 23, 2004 8:57 AM
yup, 'tis why i posted it. i didn't want to embarrass the gothamist panda lover, though.
Posted by: corie at March 23, 2004 9:00 AM
Posted by: tien at March 23, 2004 9:06 AM
During my junior year at Columbia, a group of Asian-American students from assorted East Coast colleges mounted a protest in Times Square over an Abercrombie shirt that had this caricature of two pointy-hatted Chinese men with slits for eyes which read "Two Wongs Will Make it White". Looks like the company's at it again.
Posted by: Shryh at March 23, 2004 9:13 AM
Abercrombie has always tried to push the preppy envelope with their t-shirts (not to mention now defunct catalogue). It makes you wonder who exactly is working in their QC department...or whether it's all just a ploy to create publicity. I'd suspect the latter, while Urban Outfitter's t-shirt debacle was just plain bad judgement. Either way, they're all dumb, ignorant moves.
Tien, if I hadn't already gotten the Paul Frank "You can never have too many cats" shirt I'd probably go for it...I think I like the "only my cat understands me" much better. It's probably true!
Posted by: corie at March 23, 2004 9:16 AM
My grandpa used to sing me a song about being Hungary for Turkey in Greece. I think it was an old ditty from the 1930's.
Posted by: gregg at March 23, 2004 10:18 AM
I want the cotton factory mascot!
Posted by: joe s at March 23, 2004 1:02 PM
"Thy Cube" is also one of my favorites. One day, when I have time to figure out the best way to do it, I want to create my own kind of "wishlist" which allows people to link off to lots of different places to buy me pressies. there should be a service that manages that for you, now that i think about it...actually, i'm surprised amazon hasn't started with such an idea...
Posted by: corie at March 23, 2004 1:17 PM
I dunno, I prefer t-shirts that don't look like they were made on a Mac Plus in 1986. Call me weird.
Posted by: Mike at March 23, 2004 4:56 PM
Aw, come now, Mike. It's a little nostalgia for ya...
Posted by: corie at March 24, 2004 8:16 AM
What i want to know its where can I get this shirt that says "its all relative in west virginia"??? Thats a funny shirt...
People just get too affended these days..
Posted by: julia at April 8, 2004 4:24 PM
What i want to know its where can I get this shirt that says "its all relative in west virginia"??? Thats a funny shirt...
People just get too affended these days..
Posted by: julia at April 8, 2004 4:24 PM
