There was a time, in the ancient annals of our forefathers, when things were much different then they are now. There were not modern conveniences like microwaves and cell phones. There were no such things as home computers or the Internet. Yes, this ancient time was a time of our grandparents. When men were men, and women wore high-heels in the kitchen while they cooked for their unappreciative men. Things have changed so much, that you can look at something so simple as t-shirts and see the way they have morphed into something completely different over the course of just a few years.

The t-shirts of our grandparents were just about as boring and dull as the people who wore them. While there are people, such as myself, who wear nothing but t-shirts during the entire span of their young adult years, t-shirts were considered nothing more than a form of undergarment back then. There was actually a time when people were so afraid of nipples, that men has to wear an extra layer of fabric just to make certain that people could believe that nipples were as unreal as unicorns. This goes to prove that our grandparents were absolutely insane.

If we think that our grandparents were strange for their fear of showing too much t-shirt, then the 60′s existed only to let us know how equally crazy our parents were. No matter what your parents say, they were probably hippies. Hippies saw how their parents hid their t-shirts and decided they would wear nothing BUT t-shirts. I suppose it was a form of rebellion, but it did have an affect on the way America looked at the lowly t-shirt. Plain white tees were replaced in kind by a rainbow of colors and a serious lack of washing.

Now we fast-forward to the 80′s when we saw a war being fought over the ownership of t-shirts. Did t-shirts belong to corporate America, or to the growing members of the punk-rock movement? The punk rockers in America used black markers to scrawl homemade declarations of sarcastic war against corporations and the government while those same corporations used t-shirts as free advertisement. I have never seen someone turn down a free t-shirt, even if that free t-shirt has Mountain Dew logos all over it. Needless to say, the victory went where the money is…and punks were never known to be particularly affluent.

The change in t-shirts today has taken them so far from their roots that only the general shape of the t-shirt is the same as it was in the beginning. There are now many different styles, ranging from v-neck to baseball tees. The designs have gotten much more complex as well, from offensive humor-based t-shirts to t-shirts that look like they could be framed and put on the wall as art. T-shirts are funny in the way that man has taken them and turned them into something that can be written and drawn upon. They have gone from being underwear to out-spoken wear.

There is a great site about t-shirts which can be found at t-shirts where you can see how it’s done right.

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