As you may know, Teespring is a creator's marketplace and is a platform for small businesses and DIY creatives to express their art in t-shirt form. However, there are limits to what the site will allow to be expressed through art, and Teespring reviews all submissions based on content, per their website.
The platform's latest t-shirt is a doozy. In what seems to be an effort to automatically shut down the positive array of "Black Girls Are Magic," "Carefree Black Girl," "Black Girls Rock" and other "yaaasss" positive messages toward black women, someone created a "Black Women Are Trash" t-shirt.
*record scratch*
One of the primary reasons behind the barrage of black beauty messages on social media is how much black women are piled-on. Clearly thinking that the world needed one more anti-black women beauty message, someone created this shirt.
That someone was Twitter user @TrueCharter, who, after designing and posting the tees and tanks on Teespring, actively encouraged other non-black women to join in on the bashing.
Photos: Twitter
Naturally and validly so, it created a huge stir, for which Teespring has since apologized for.
Photo: Twitter
"We’d like to apologize for this offensive content that was posted on the Teespring platform,” a Teespring representative told Yahoo Style, and reiterated via Twitter. “It does not reflect our views as an organization, and it violates Teespring’s acceptable use policies. Our team has removed this item from our site, and we’re monitoring closely to take down any other products that violate our content guidelines.”
Photos: Twitter
This whole kerfuffle may have been settled on the business-side, but it just further reiterates how misogyny and its intersectional partner misogynoir are an unfortunate prominent force in our society, especially given our current presidential administration.
Here's hoping that one day black women won't need to combat these messages by celebrating ourselves, and can just celebrate ourselves just because we deserve to be celebrated.