Let us start with a premise I call the Theory of Ontology of T-Shirts (TOOOTS). TOOOTS holds that a T-shirt printed with words or images confers upon its wearers the essence of those words or images. When you wear a Batman logo T-shirt, and all day long everyone shouts “Batman!” at you, you cannot help but assimilate Batman into your self-concept for the duration of your time wearing that shirt. You have associated yourself with Batman. You may even begin to respond to “Batman!” as though it is your name, until you take the shirt off at the end of the day. Thus, graphic T-shirts subtly alter our identities. The self and its signifiers become one with the stupid shit printed on your overpriced T-shirt.
“I was in a weird mood, and I don’t know what came over me, but I bought this weird thing,” a college boyfriend I will call Thomas said to me. As he leaned into the closet to retrieve the mystery purchase, I steeled myself for the worst. (Matching hats? Depraved sex toy?) When he emerged, he was wearing a sweatshirt that said THOMAS in block letters. He was the visual equivalent of a newly verbal toddler who continually announces his own name, an effect I found hysterical. Every time Thomas wore the THOMAS sweatshirt, I would laugh nonstop until he took it off. But the THOMAS sweatshirt caused problems beyond girlfriend hysteria, too. When Thomas wore it to class, he discovered that there was absolutely no way to avoid getting called on when your name is printed in giant letters on your chest. To look at Thomas in that sweatshirt was to identify him, and to be invited to say his name.
Celebrities’ faces are the equivalent of Thomas’s THOMAS sweatshirt. Since strangers are constantly looking at their faces and then shouting their names, why not double down and wear their faces on their chests, too? It’s funny because it’s a recursion of fame. Fame, reflected in a thousand mirrors. Fame, broadcast in a Twitter picture, then shared hundreds of thousands of times, copied and pasted on dozens of news websites and blogs.
As Shakespeare surely would have noted, had screen-printing come to Stratford-upon-Avon a little sooner: All the world’s an Urban Outfitters, and the celebrities are merely ironic T-shirts.
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