The void

Literally everything I do is for posts

One day, millennia from now, they will ask, “What was Twitter?” And the answer will come in the form of this, the perfect specimen of a tweet.

We have a whole scene set. Pilates class, an upscale setting. A shirt bearing a message. And, because every such anecdote needs one, a White Lady. A Karen, if you will. She appears on this virtual stage that is the 5:04 PM social media posting and does… what, exactly?

As with all the best posts, a void at the center is the true brilliance.

“This white woman” seems to have done… nothing whatsoever. She literally shared a physical space in a fitness class with the poster. Did she read the poster’s t-shirt slogan out loud or just glance at it, in a way that suggests this reading took place? Unclear.

But what is clear, to the poster, is that the look the woman shot back was one of terror. She “looked at me like it said ‘I eat kittens for breakfast.’”

What we have, in other words, is a good old-fashioned feelings-projection tweet. The poster presents this as a white lady doing a racism and a sexism. (She is, per the rather epic replies, which I will get to, a handmaiden of the patriarchy. This woman about whom nothing is known.)

Meanwhile, if we assume the scene in question is one that really happened—and my hunch is that it did, or rather, that there was a white woman, and that she was in a Pilates class, her face at least fleetingly directed towards the poster—then what was happening with “this white woman” was, I would guess, a facial expression. Either the sad-angry look that’s just what many faces look like past a certain age (25?) unless there are interventions, or the less age-specific (but no less gendered) resting bitch face.

There was a time when feminism meant complaining that women are expected to smile all the time, and to stay young and pretty forever. That time has passed. The new feminism is about team-picking in online battles (albeit in this case a one-sided one, the participants on one side being the poster and her sycophantic replies, while on the other, that void).

We have, in one corner, someone with 42,000 Twitter followers, with a seemingly non-medical “Dr” in her handle, whose bio reads, “Academic. Pleasure activist. Author of #BodymindsReimagined & #BlackDisabilityPolitics.” Whose shirt says, “Literally nothing I do is for men.”

How better to signal that you’re one of the good ones (especially if you yourself happen to be a white woman, though the fawning replies are from a more varied bunch) than by taking the side of this person with unimpeachable politics and identity characteristics? And why not join in the creation of the fictional character, “this white woman”?

The replies are full of people with some notions about why the long face:

“She was jealous because it never occurred to her that she could do for herself and not men.”

Another: “She’s been doing all she did for men and has now been made aware of other options.”

Another: “If your entire identity revolves around being matched up with a man, seeing a shirt like that would probably be distressing.”

It’s cruel, and stupid. The best that can be said is that it’s cruel and stupid towards an unnamed individual. And, maybe, that there’s a backtrack of sorts. It was “a joke,” but also those criticizing it are “sad men & pick-mes.” A “pick-me” being, I suppose, a woman whose shirt says, implicitly, ‘Literally everything I do is for men.’

Finally, about The Shirt. “Literally nothing I do is for men.” What does it mean, what does it mean?

Someone in my replies points out the relevance of the fitness class setting. The statement, that is, that one is working out, yes, but not for the male gaze. Maybe?

Given that men are, like women, everywhere, one would hope that everyone sometimes does things for other people, other people including but not limited to men.

Is the shirt instead about not doing things for men-as-a-class? And if so, what does that mean? If a woman does strive to look or act appealing to men, she is presumably doing this for her own benefit, and not as a goodwill gesture towards the menfolk. To get ahead, in some capacity, or—not to get too wild here—to find a male partner. Something women, not just vapid ones, sometimes want to do. And then once you have one, you do things for him, and he for you.

If you wear this shirt, who’s the woman you’re defining yourself against? Is it girlboss-era-holdover merch? Is it a combative (but more to the point, cringe) way of letting any not-men you may meet at the gym know that they do stand a chance?

Because there is only one sympathetic interpretation I can come up with of the anecdote involving the supposedly shirt-contemplating Pilates classmate. Sometimes we’ve all wished someone was staring at our shirt a second longer than they needed to.