the basic tee
normcriticism, 2022
normcriticism, 2022
when i was 14, i started to be unhappy with the way i dressed and insecure in my masculinity and started looking on youtube for advice. one of the first channels i found was one called alpha m, who made fashion and lifestyle videos. similar creators focused more on hair, some talked more about confidence.
soon, the suggestions youtube started making included some content by jordan b. peterson, stuff by ben shapiro and many other right wing youtubers that smoothly picked up (and still pick up) where alpha m left off.
i am lucky to have had a surrounding and education which helped me to not fall deeper into the rabbit hole, and didn't get much further in the pipeline than a bland fashion sense and 'only' some internalised homophobia and misogyny, which still set back my understanding of my own sexuality and gender identity by years.
with this project, i am trying to visualise the radicalisation happening under the surface, often very unseemingly, to a lot of kids online.
for visualisation, i used male fashion youtube's biggest obsession, the 'plain white tee'. i turned it inside out, and stenciled video titles from the different channels i got suggested onto the shirt in helvetica, the most bland font in existence.
the text is not visible when the t-shirt is worn, bottled up inside.
next to the t-shirt there is a poem, called "under ytan".
