The ideal democratic apparel: t-shirts, religious intolerance, and the clothing of democracy
Studies of clothing highlight the power of fashion and the ways dominant groups police deviant fashion; however, they neglect to analyze how a mainstream fashion item, the T-shirt, also helps monitor the boundaries and norms of American society. This article examines the relationship between the T-s...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Taylor & Francis
[2014]
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| In: |
Material religion
Year: 2014, Volume: 10, Issue: 2, Pages: 182-207 |
| Further subjects: | B
American individualism
B Material Culture B T-shirts B Clothing B Religious Intolerance B Democracy B Religion B Islamophobia |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Resolving-System) |
| Summary: | Studies of clothing highlight the power of fashion and the ways dominant groups police deviant fashion; however, they neglect to analyze how a mainstream fashion item, the T-shirt, also helps monitor the boundaries and norms of American society. This article examines the relationship between the T-shirt form and religious intolerance. Scholars have analyzed nativist rhetoric, polemical literature, and caricatured renderings, yet clothing as a site of religious conflict remains understudied. To address these scholarly gaps, this article first investigates the history and meanings of the T-shirt, and then presents a case study of religious intolerance focused on Islamophobic T-shirts. This analysis builds toward an understanding of the T-shirt as the ideal article of democratic apparel for disseminating religious intolerance. In the end, we see how these T-shirts refashion religious intolerance as American individualism, thus perpetuating the idea that religious intolerance is only an occasional accessory to, rather than a constituent part of the clothing of, American democracy. |
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| ISSN: | 1751-8342 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Material religion
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.2752/175183414X13990269049400 |