So Scarli-Jo is the object of criticism, once again. Last year she was in the middle of SodaStream-gate – she had to step down as an ambassador for Oxfam after signing an endorsement deal with the carbonated drinks company which has a controversial factory on Israel’s West Bank – and now she’s getting stick for a T-shirt that she designed.
That’s right, a T-shirt. It’s bright pink and covered in curliecue and it would seem that it’s missed the point.
Scarlett was asked by Plannet Parenthood Action Fund – along with a host of other celebs including *Orange Is The New Black’*s Natasha Lyonne – to design her own T-shirt, as part of a project commissioned by Planned Parenthood’s Women Are Watching campaign, which is all about female empowerment and encouraging women to be actively involved in both their health and their political rights.
The T-shirt’s perky-slash-sarky message reads: ‘Hey Politicians! The 1950s called...’ and then flip the back – ‘They want their sexism back!’ The T-shirt is bright pink, the font is cutesily retro and the cartoon of a wartime-esque illustration of a man with a forced richter smile and lacquered hair – which is all entirely the point (the message being for politicians to stop being as outdated as the tee’s design), but it has received tons of criticm for, well, lacking in punch.
As The Cut says, they are essentially ‘unsightly [though] well-meaning shirts’.
The Debrief office is in agreement. ‘It’s not saying anything that hasn’t been said before. It’s not remotely profound,’ says one Debriefer. ‘It’s not cool enough to wear – you’d wear it to bed, at best,’ says another. It is, let’s be honest, very pink and twinkly.
Scarlett stands by her cotton creation (RRP $25), though: ‘Women are watching and we will fight for candidates [in Congress] who will ensure that birth control is affordable and who will protect access to safe and legal abortion... When I heard that some politicians were cheering the Supreme Court’s decision to give bosses the right to interfere in our access to birth control, I thought I had woken up in another decade.’
Which is a sentiment* The Debrief* more than agrees with. It’s just that a shame that the T-shirt looks like something Paris Hilton would have worn on* The Simple Life*.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.