The t-shirt: that one piece you throw on without thinking. Supposedly simple, neutral. But is it? What if the "wrong" body wears it?

You might think we’d be past this conversation by now. Feminists have been fighting for bodily autonomy since the 1960s. Free the Nipple has been around since 2012. And yet, here we are. Girls are still being pulled out of class because their t-shirt hugs the "wrong" body part. Instagram posts are still taken down because the t-shirt is too sheer, and the body is too visible. Meanwhile, a shirtless white guy jogging through the park? Just another Tuesday. So, I guess there’s more work to do?

T-shirts started as men’s underwear, and went mainstream because white angry men wore them in 1950s movies with leather jackets and a pair of biceps. So naturally, by the time women got to wear the garment, men had already found a way to sexualise them for it: the wet t-shirt contest. What started as a so-called playful bar game even became a tool of selection in serious businesses. Don’t believe me? In 1983, at a King & Spalding (2023 Best Law Firm winner!) picnic, women interns were asked to compete in their wet tee’s. The reward for the winner: a permanent job. Not because she had a prestigious Harvard law school degree, but because she had "a body we’d like to see more of." Gross doesn’t even cover it.

Fast forward to 2025, it might seem less extreme, but maybe that’s worse. It’s subtler, easier to deny. Harder to hold people accountable. On social media, the t-shirt rules shift depending on who you are. Creators like Jessica Blair (@lovejessicablair) post empowering content – often in t-shirts. “Fat people aren’t supposed to wear baggy clothes or bodycon clothes or stripes or all black or — yada yada yada!!!!! Fashion rules do not exist in my mind, and they never will.” She’s right. And yet her posts get taken down or buried because she’s fat, confident, and not afraid to show skin. But thank God for Meta’s new AI moderation system that apparently “filters out harmful content more effectively and works to protect us”, as Luke Chinman explains.

Also, in real life, t-shirt dress codes disproportionately target women. In 2018, 17-year-old Lizzy Martinez showed up to her high school in an oversized Calvin Klein tee, braless because of a sunburn. She was pulled from class, told to layer up, and made to jump to see how much her boobs bounced. Was your reaction horror? Same. (If not, kindly exit this article, and possibly society too.) You might think she’s the exception. Wrong. A study on hundreds of U.S. high schools’ policies found that almost 60 percent of clothing items flagged as “distracting” were girls’: tight tops, cropped tees. Just 5 percent of the bans applied to boys’ clothing.

Let’s be fair, not only women are judged because of their tees. Men in cropped tees are getting a double glance in public. A guy with basic human decency and a genuine question wrote on Reddit: “Men, why did we stop wearing crop tops?” To which a commenter who’s clearly part of the problem replied: “Because gays openly wore them, and that association was enough to make it very uncool for straight men.” So, being mistaken for queer is worse than getting overheated in the summer. Groundbreaking.

From underwear to military uniform, from a symbol of rebelliousness to a timeless wardrobe staple – the t-shirt has evolved tremendously. And somewhere along the way, it became a quiet mirror of our double standards. On the “wrong body” a t-shirt can become provocative, inappropriate, or even offensive. The t-shirt shows us who’s free to exist comfortably in their body, and who still must defend theirs. It shows us the silent rules we keep pretending aren’t there.

So no, even with that simple, “neutral”, archetypical t-shirt on, the rules aren’t the same for everyone. But wait, maybe the t-shirt is the problem? Maybe if we take it off, everything gets easier?

As someone who has a “Let them stare, I bet it’s gonna be the highlight of their whole week” attitude to dressing, I generally don’t think twice about throwing on a tight t-shirt with my nipples poking through. Emphasis on "generally”, using “always” would be a big fat lie. Do you think a guy ever pondered that while blindly grabbing a tee from his “clean” pile?