It’s an orange T-shirt. Or, at least, it was. As it’s now over 17 years old, it’s more of . . . I want to say “a troubled apricot”. In 2021, the shape is no longer “a T-shirt”. It’s warped from so many washes that it’s stretched to mid-thigh length – so it looks, disconcertingly, like the tunic worn by the Seventies cartoon character Bod. The hem at the bottom dangles like a mad, tattered crinoline. There are also seven tiny holes around the nipple area. As if a gang of hungry breastfeeding moths have been at work, munching away at the tit zone.
This is my husband’s favourite T-shirt. He wears it at the gym. “I run faster in it,” he says, looking at it lovingly. “As soon as I put it on, I know it’s going to be a good day. I’ve run all my best times in it. I don’t know why.”
“Is it because ‘terrible social shame’ makes you run faster?” I ask.
“No!” he replies, ignoring me. “I figured it’s the ventilation – from all the holes! I’ve got a through-breeze! All the air is keeping me cool.”
“Love, it’s literally a rag,” I say. “I’ve genuinely cleaned the windows with better items.”
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“It’s the gym!” he says. “Everyone wears a scruffy T-shirt at the gym. That’s gymwear!”
“No,” I say. “ ‘Gymwear’ is a very lovely selection, full of options, in eg John Lewis. We could go there! Get you a nice new top that provides ‘ventilation’ via exciting wicking fabrics – which would still keep you cool and cover your man-nipples from view.”
“A waste of money,” Pete says, dismissively. “This T-shirt does the job! Has done since 2003!”
“The only ‘job’ that T-shirt does is provide moths with glory holes,” I reply.
“What’s a glory hole?” Pete asks.
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“Google it. On your way to John Lewis. Here is money. Please buy a new top.”
“It’s just a top,” Pete says, genuinely confused. “Why do you care?”
Why do I care? I don’t want to be horribly reductive about gender roles – but I suspect every woman reading this has a husband who has an item of clothing like this. Something so battered that it passed “comfortably well-worn” a full decade ago and now reads, simply, “I live under a piece of corrugated iron, and catch pigeons to eat, as snacks.”
I don’t mean this as a slur to the homeless, many of whom are very well dressed compared with my husband. I am describing the life, style and wardrobe of the ogre Shrek.
Why do I care? I care because, despite all my feminisms – and I think I score around 8.7 ovaries on the Feminism-O-Meter – I know that a married man regularly dressing as one of the Background Orphans from Oliver! conveys a certain vibe. To wit: that there is no one at home who loves him enough to emotionally manipulate him into buying a new, better top. A married man dressed in rags suggests his wife has given up on him; that she doesn’t care enough to nag him into adhering to society’s crazy rules, like “wearing a top in better nick than the loincloth of Lindow Man”.
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I know, as a fact, that there will be other wives at the gym who will have concluded our marriage is on the rocks. That I am “allowing” Pete to go out in public looking like this by way of sending a message to other women: “This man has been rejected by his partner. Observe how quickly he has declined without my care and attention. Point at him and whisper to your husbands, ‘And that’s your future if you dick me around: Les Misérables realness.’ ”
All clothing is a communication. Pete’s T-shirt is saying: “I am in preliminary talks with a divorce lawyer.”
“I feel like you are at great risk from a kind, unmarried woman saying, ‘Are you going through a bad time right now?’ ” I explain. “Or even offering to sew up your nipple holes, which will basically be her way of saying, ‘Once you get the decree nisi through, call me. You just need a good woman, to care for you’.”
“I’m sorry,” Pete says, regretfully. “I do hear you. But I can’t be swayed by society’s petty clothing prejudices. Don’t feel you’re responsible for me. I’m 52! I am going to keep that T-shirt.”
And the matter is closed, firmly, down.
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Two days later, however, we come in halfway through an episode of Celebrity Antiques Hunt, where it’s obvious, to me, that one of the celebrities is Ruth Madoc, star of Hi-de-Hi!.
“Coh! That’s never Madoc!” he insists. “It’s obviously Rhodes. Zandra Rhodes.”
And then, unexpectedly: “Bet the T-shirt on it?” – just as Su Pollard screams, “LOOK AT THIS WHOPPING GREAT DINOSAUR EGG, RUTH MADOC!”
I smile at him fondly – he has deliberately thrown the bet, so neither of us would have to feel we’d “lost” on the T-shirt issue. This is a good marriage! Look how careful we are of each other’s feelings! I feel great contentment and joy. Not least because I’d already put the T-shirt in the bin.
