What's on YOUR chest? ... by Barbara (Ruth)

Recently I found one of my old lists, and it caused me to chuckle enough to consider it blog-worthy. I had started noticing tshirts that were really hilarious, and noted them in my blackberry: 

• What is Scientology anyway? No, seriously. (We're all thinking it, aren't we?)
• My Patronus is a Wookie. (Cross-geeking!)
• It's all Gouda. (Wonderful play on an overused phrase.)
• My other ride is your mother. (Dirty. But I laughed out loud in the store.)
• Alabama - so many recipes, so few squirrels. (If you've seen the clip on YouTube "Leprechaun in Alabama", you will know how apropos this is.)
• Trap or Die. (What does this mean? I saw it on a teenager's tshirt and it scared me a little.)
• Stop Clubbing Baby Seals. They never buy a round, they dance too close, and their breath smells of herring. (I saw this online... pretty funny... like the joke "So. A baby seal walks into a club." HAHAHAHA - I never get sick of that one.)
• I'm Kind of a Big Deal. (Oh if only I had the nerve to wear that one!)
• PB&J BFF (If you know me, you know why I'd love that shirt.)

There's a lot of power in a tshirt. Originally part of work clothes in the army and navy, the tshirt was popularized by Marlon Brando in 1960's "A Streetcar Named Desire", and then became easy protest garb and eventually wearable art in the 60's and 70s. It's hard to believe the famous "smile face", or "I 'heart' NY", or even the Rolling Stones tongue & lips logo all started in the 70s on a tshirt. 

People go mad for clever tshirts these days. At my first job I remember it was amazing how many people entered contests just so they could have that free tshirt that would invariably be too big and end up as sleepwear or in the Goodwill pile. And when Delta was bordering on bankruptcy several years ago, they asked employees to pitch in and volunteer 8 hour shifts to clean planes. Their pay? A tshirt. And get this - 300 people signed up for the first shifts.

Then of course there are the tshirts with the company logo across the chest. Consumers everywhere are suckered in to shelling out thirty or forty dollars so they can wear "ROOTS" or "Guess" across their chests. I wonder who the clever person was who figured out how to get customers to pay for the privilege of providing free advertising for a company?

I may eventually purchase my favourite tshirt. If what people wear on their chest is so powerful, then this is a message worth spreading: