Urban Outfitters Sold A Bloody Kent State Shirt, So Let’s Boycott Them For School Shopping
Just in case your faith in humanity was soaring a little too high today, here’s some nausea-inducing news from retailer Urban Outfitters. The store’s online shop, which sells literally one-of-a-kind thrift store finds had something extra special for sale this time: a pink vintage Kent State University sweatshirt, complete with an artistically applied fake blood spattering. If you have a teenager begging to go back-to-school shopping at Urban Outfitters, or wants to jazz up their dorm rooms with some of the company’s homewares, I beg you: please take them somewhere, anywhere, else.
This shirt is the epitome of tastelessness, but the product description provided by Urban Outfitters really adds a chewy layer of tone-deaf fondant fuckery to the tragedy-exploiting, cash-grabbing cake:
Washed soft and perfectly broken in, this vintage Kent State sweatshirt is cut in a loose, slouchy fit. Excellent vintage condition. We only have one, so get it or regret it!
About Vintage Finds
– Vintage Finds are handpicked vintage pieces from allover the map
– We find the best stuff out there just for you– Each piece is unique – we only have one available and it can only be purchased by a single customer
The single-issue sweatshirt is already sold out, despite its $139 price tag. $139, by the way, is enough to buy 15 Kindle copies of How Not to Be a Dick, which would probably be enough to distribute to whichever department thought selling this item was a good idea. Almost as soon as it was sold by Urban Outfitters, the shirt reappeared on Ebay, being offered at a starting bid of a mere $550. If you’re thinking about buying it for yourself or someone you know, please leave a message in the comments with your address, so I can drive to your house and slap you in the face.
This isn’t the first time Urban Outfitters has come under fire for their products. Just off the top of my head, I can remember previous controversies involving the retailer have involved their blatant appropriation of Native American motifs and patterns, their “Everyone Loves Jewish Girls” t-shirt blinged out with dollar signs and shopping bags, and of course their eating-disorder-promoting shirt instructing you to “Eat Less”. And if that’s the only scandals that have hit them, I will buy and then eat their most sexist, racist, or culturally insensitive hat. Exploiting a forty-year-old tragedy for money (and, let’s be real, some publicity of the “any is good” variety) is just another awful chapter in Gross Stuff Urban Outfitters Has Sold: The Novel.
So, I don’t care how much your kid begs, screams, and pouts: do not spend a penny of your money at this ridiculously gross store. If they need a vintage shirt that badly, take them to the thrift shop. And if they try to apply their own fake blood stains to it to make it edgy and cool, first ground them and then make sure they’re enrolled in a Modern US History class this year at school.
(Image: kentstatesweater/Ebay)
