Hey Everyone, Stop Making Offensive Australia Day T-Shirts, Okay?
Following last week's Aldi/Big W fiasco, another one's been pulled from shops overnight.
Earlier this month, local supermarket chains Aldi and Big W pulled a new range of Australia Day t-shirts from their sales racks after receiving a stream of criticism on social media for its racist tagline (also, those colours are so last season):
Supermarket chain @ALDIAustralia have announced they are removing “inflammatory” t-shirts | http://t.co/1x8WC5OyNcpic.twitter.com/BuuQFTMAbW
— Matt Young (@MattYoung) January 8, 2014
–
Well, it seems someone missed the whole memo about not making offensive t-shirts, because it’s happened again. Yesterday, local “fashion” label Ice Design got into the social media backlash game after designing and selling these classy tank tops:
.@icefashion please follow @tradesecret‘s lead & remove this T-shirt from sale. Women are not property. #notbuyingitpic.twitter.com/OFplLl89sb
— Destroy The Joint (@JointDestroyer) January 20, 2014
–
Overnight, the company addressed the whole debacle on their Facebook page, apologising for the offending shirt and stating that they’d be “withdrawing the T-shirt in question from sale”, which was nice of them. But then they also said this weird nonsense:
“This slogan was chosen by our all-female design team. It is supposed to be a light hearted play on words. Our intention was that it would be interpreted in much the same way as “My boyfriend is an Aussie Boy” or “I go out with an Aussie Boy”.
The use of the word “property” in the context of the garment is in reference with the word “my” as in my partner, my boyfriend, my husband. A great example of this is in the casual context of introducing your partner at a social gathering – in common exchanges one might say “Hi guys, this is my girlfriend Cathy”. The word my refers to the concept of belonging to, an association of sorts, and relationship that may exist.
The top is part of our Australia Day promotional range which is intended to celebrate the Australian spirit. We apologise if the meaning of this has been misconstrued by any of our customers and we trust this statement clears up any misgivings our customers have had.”
–
Somehow, I don’t think they get it. Dear terrible clothing designers of Australia: if you’d like to design a patriotic t-shirt that we can all get behind, avoid the Southern Cross stars and ill-considered taglines, and just stick a photo of Shaun Micallef on a plain white T. Look, I just designed one in about 28 seconds for you:
That’s the kind of Australia we all wanna live in.