Outspoken Apparel for the Discreetly Disruptive Ashlander

Ever since the Fall from Grace, humans have been wearing clothing, stealing the skins off furry creatures, weaving wool and hemp strands into textiles, imprinting fabrics with bright imagery, and cutting and stitching flexible materials into soft sculptures that reinterpret the human form. Clothes, some have said, make the man, and I said as much to my friend Cyl Stengel as I saw her walking past Geppettos yesterday in a stylish thrift-store herringbone calf-length overcoat that accented her boyish haircut most fetchingly. Cyl, like my old friend Matthew Small, could walk through a Salvation Army and come out dressed like Cary Grant our Audrey Hepburn, but for the rest of us, sartorial panache is elusive.

Reasons for our dowdiness we have in abundance. After all, we are activists. Style? Fashion? Who has time for it? So many demonstrations to attend, so many new relationships to develop, so many tyrants to topple, so many living beings to place in pure awareness, and so little time to actually sound off about what chaps your very own, personal hide. Some people, inspired by Lady Godiva, who doffed her royal gowns to remind her husband that the peasants were also nearly bare due to their poverty, resort to displays of bare elegance, and as the breast-baring protesters a few months ago showed us, the City of Ashland may consider exposed breasts a form of free speech. However, for many of us, wishing to maintain employment, and deter gossip among the narrow-minded, naked expression of this sort is unpalatable. If you fall into this last category, the Ashland Free Press has developed a line of “Outspoken Apparel.” Our first offering, modeled here by Holly Sheehy, is the “I Want To Spy On You,” t-shirt, plucked from the cover of the New Years 2006 issue of the AFP. While we can't promise you'll look as provocative as Holly, you can wear it with impunity, knowing that after all, you are only repeating what the President himself promised. Worried about ending up on the FBI's list? Don't be. This is safer than getting email from MoveOn.org. Although penis enlargement ads and Democratic spam in your email leave electronic fingerprints, a t-shirt is an evanescent statement that you can wear today and stuff in your drawer (or fireplace) at a moment's notice. So, as your attorney, I advise you to come down the AFP Writer's Lounge in the Underground Markets, buy one of these bad boys for $15, slip it over your torso, and start enjoying the stream of delighted looks from shameless Ashland liberals who will congratulate you on your good taste and intellectual acuity. Then, you can share love, and tell them where you got it. Enough of these shirts get out there, and soon, the undeniable, naked truth will be out — and Lady Godiva couldn't say it better.