For the heck of it : Of T-shirt slogans and Male pride

by Hana Ibrahim

With Valentine's Day around the corner, whimsy, that capricious spirit responsible for tweaking the intellect into jettisoning any sagacious or sapient contemplation, has me lapsing back to random thoughts and pontificating. Pontificating, not so much on what Machiavellian tactics had been used to hijack Valentine's Day from its unadorned cosy milieu and warp it into a hyped-up consumerist non-event, as on the death of T-shirt slogans and that thing called the male ego.

Actually, it's my schizo cat who has of late claimed ownership to the tattered remains of my once favourite T-shirt with its bawdy slogan 'Porn is the theory. Rape is practice' that got me thinking.

The ennui of Valentine hype is to be expected given the witless commercialisation that pays homage to the prosaic 'muchness of the sameness' credo. But T-shirts? Why have body slogans suddenly gone witless? Not just witless, but also bromidically blah.

Just look at some of those parading down the streets and you'll know what I mean. People don't have anything to say on their T-shirts any more. No political statements. No feminist statements. No Green Statements. No statements. Period.

What happened to slogans like 'I became a feminist as an alternative to becoming a masochist', 'Every mother is a working mother', 'Which of us is the opposite sex...'

I once had a slogan that read 'The trouble with the world is that political jokes get elected'. Of course, my former boss didn't like me wearing it to office. But I wore it all the same, because simply having it across my chest made me feel as though I was telling the world what I thought about politicians in power.

Personally, I think the 90s was the boom time for T-shirt slogans when political sentiments ran high, environment was becoming a catch phrase and Bush and Blair were there to poke fun at.

There was also the post-perestroika Cyrillic craze, when it was hip to be seen in a T-shirt with CCCP Constructivism images across the chest. Apparently none of these T-shirts had been printed in Russia. I know, because I asked a friend of mine (Ukrainian doctor to be specific) to get one. He combed the streets of Leningrad and came back saying that the young Russian Grooveniks were more interested in Iron Maiden than anything Cyrillic.

Things on the T-shirt front have been going steadily downhill for a long time. And apart from 'This time It's Love - Next Time its $50', recent body slogans have hardly managed to raise a smile, let alone a titter. What has happened? Is creativity on the T-shirt front losing its edge, or is the jejunic clan beginning to have more of an influence than they are credited with?

The most curious T-shirt I've seen in ages is a heavily pregnant woman wearing a dress length T-shirt bearing the slogan 'Sexy Radio - FM Megahertz' No doubt, a highly successful advertising campaign. But where do we find Sexy Radio on the dial, here in Sri Lanka? Impertinence also has be questioning whether listening to sexy radio makes one pregnant?

So what has really happened? Ever since my cat claimed the rights to my T-shirt, I've been looking around for something meaningful... And know what I discovered. Slogans, in a manner similar to Valentine's Day have been replaced by product endorsements, not so cute cartoon characters and weird Fido with his Diddo hairstyle.

However, the T-shirt that takes top honours for sheer fatuous vapidity is the one that says 'Life's A Beach'.

So much for T-shirt slogans! So what about the male ego? Nothing, except that I recently read Willard Gaylin's 'The Male Ego' and can't resist commenting, because well....

You see there is this contumacious side of me that makes me go contrary to popular belief, especially when it comes to books and movies and the male of the species. It's a bit like being on a self-inflicted ego destruction course. And resultantly nobody agrees with my views. It is always off centre, unbecoming, totally off beat and immensely kooky.

When I was in school... that's another story but to get down to the ego business, what I like about 'The Male Ego', is for once, there is somebody out there agreeing with me. I've always figured Narcissism of male bonding that make the mere male think he's superior being purely by converting pseudo machismo to something more endearing and appealing to be an overrated thing. And Gaylin confirms it.

He says the male ego is an overrated substance and that men are facing a crisis, because the two sources that gave them cause to be proud - power and status - aren't male domains any more.

He also confirms another of my theory - that men have not been able to get themselves off the primordial swamps. Actually he doesn't use the exact words. But the intent is the same when he says that men, unlike women, have not been able to accept changes.

He might be a closet feminist. That's what my friend Freddy said when I read him excerpts of the book. But what do I care. The author is secure in his convictions and is strong enough to put it down on paper. He is even strong enough to face the consequence of injured male pride, providing of course some male can dig deep enough to come up with some bona fide ego, to challenge him. He suggests that manhood must create new sources of male pride. May be, they should start looking at their facial hair for a source of pride.

After all, it has been said often enough that the only thing a man can do by himself is grow his own moustache.