Observing US:
A column about America,
by Marylaine Block
originally published by
Fox News Online, 1998-2000

#96, July 18, 2000

TO A TEE

by Marylaine Block

Some people are appalled by the decline of the business suit and the rise of casual dress.

Not me.

You see, I understand Americans enough to know it was inevitable. None of us wants to be just another anonymous suit. We all want others to know what we care about, and what makes us special. Even strong silent types who used to let their actions speak for them now wear "Just do it!" shirts. From the moment James Dean appeared on screen wearing a t-shirt as proof he was an outsider, the tee has been our preferred uniform, our customizable, wearable philosophy of life.

Want our real opinion of the guys in suits? Ask a t-shirt: "If at first you don't succeed, try management." Want to know what techies think about ordinary hapless computer users? "Technology: no place for wimps." Does Bill Gates want our real opinion of Windows? "Multi-tasking: screwing up several things at once."

We use t-shirts for more complex statements of philosophy, too: "Two wrongs do not make a right. But three lefts do." I painted the immortal words of Colonel Stoopnagle on a t-shirt: "If it weren't for half the people in the world, the other half would be all of them."

With T-shirts, you can trace the history of relationships between the sexes. A 60's shirt said "A woman's place is in the House. And in the Senate," while a more radical tee said "A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle." (I thought that was tacky. Perhaps, in a pinch, women COULD get along without men. But why on earth would anyone want to?)

Men's t-shirts showed their confusion, asking: "If a man speaks in the forest and there is no woman there to hear him, is he still wrong?"

We wear t-shirts to tell people what we care about - our teams, cars, the schools we're loyal to, our pets or grandchildren (we can put photos of them on shirts). Tees tell people we'd rather be golfing, skiiing or fishing. They show people that we love Rocky and Bullwinkle, Star Wars, Miss Piggy, Dracula, or Gorp.

I have tees that say "So many books. So little time," and another saying: "Books. Cats. Life is good." My son's shirts memorialize the Church of the Sub-Genius, his favorite rock bands ("Never mind the bollocks, here's the Sex Pistols"), and Tipper Gore ("Parental advisory. Explicit lyrics").

We can show off our college education with Shakespeare shirts, or tees with fake Latin inscriptions like "Carborundum non illegitimati" (Don't let the bastards wear you down). We can show people that our real life is lived online by wearing our e-mail address or URL, or a cyber-smiley :.

We use tees to tell people that we're over the hill but still trying ("Caution: www.old.dog.com; attempting.new.tricks.com"), or that we have no intention of growing up ("You can only be young once, but you can be immature forever.").

Tees can even be a valuable romantic shorthand, keeping "Save the Whales" women from falling for "Nuke the Spotted Owl" men, or agnostics from flirting with people wearing "Repent or perish" shirts.

Our shirts quote from the immortals, like Groucho Marx ("Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read"), or (apocryphally) Benjamin Franklin ("Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy").

Which brings us to one of the great but undocumented moments in marketing, when someone must have said, "I know! We'll get people to wear our advertising and make them pay US to do it!" Personally, I suspect Walt Disney, the man who got my generation to wear Davy Crockett coonskin caps. I'm guessing the first souvenir tees came from Disneyland. Since then, we've been cheerfully wearing ads for resorts, museums, movies, rock music tours, as proof that we've "Been there. Done that."

If you're hiring somebody these days, you should hope your candidates DON'T wear a suit, that they DO wear a tee. It can tell you far more than any resume ever could.

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