Threadbare Politics
Abstract
This article tells a history of the feminist T-shirt, asserting that T-shirts are media. It looks at an archive of shirts drawn from US and international political causes spanning the 1960s to the present, collected by activist Kipp Dawson. Dawson’s collection of over 250 shirts and her wearing of them demonstrate what I call “threadbare politics.” Threadbare politics refers to the type of solidarity captured in fabric and visible in the aging of both shirt and body, a type of wear and accumulation that refuses to stop. Engaging with threadbare politics requires reattuning ourselves to the materiality of media, from stains and holes to the breakdown of the threads. These traces are a sign of a life of politics at work. This unique collection reasserts the impact of T-shirts in working-class, queer political life.
Fields of Study & Subjects
Fashion and Cultural Textiles
Gender
Feminism
and Media
Posthumanist Ethics and Activism
Publication details
- Journal / source
- Feminist Media Histories
- Publisher
- University of California Press
- Volume
- 12
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 9–31
- Publication date
- 1 January 2026
- Language
- EN