As I’ve said in my previous controversial blog post, Team Manila  has made itself known as the design company that makes nationalistic shirts that sell like fishballs.

Then followed a plethora of nationalistic shirts that went viral crazy. You’ve seen hundreds of Multiply stores with national shirts. You’ve seen Collezione’s My Pilipinas shirts with the printed Philippine map ala Lacoste. And today, I saw a friend of mine, Mark Gosingtian, do a Philippine statement shirt in response to the disaster that struck our country.

As I am writing this message, the shirt has recorded 1621 notes. That’s a huge, huge number considering how relatively small the Filipino blogging community is. (In the mean time, check out his blog and order a shirt! )

The Collezione My Pilipinas Shirt

Mark's Hero Shirt. From top to bottom: Saab Magalona, Tricia Gosingtian, Mark Gosingtian

But the question I want to pose today is not a question of morality but that of productivity. Are these shirt campaigns going somewhere or are they all in vain?

Tell it with some T-shirts

We don’t need to be rocket scientists to know that we want to say something when we wear something.

There are of course, subconscious factors affecting the way we clothe ourselves, and I will not talk about these because I’m not an expert in that field. But what I want to talk about is the obvious. I want to point out the conscious and deliberate part of clothing.

Church people have Jesus dangling all over their bodies. Whores have their nipples almost slipping out of their shirts. Environmentalists will try their best to have trees, panda bears and the recycle symbol printed on their shirts. Rockstars will have a skull, guitar and some demons somewhere hidden.

The Obvious Message

These nationalistic shirts are living testimonies that we have a nation hungry for a Philippine brand. We have millions waiting for a flaming horseshoe that will burn the words, “Pinoy ako,” to their bare butts.

We don’t want to belong to a group of random people living together and screwing each other. We want a nation and we want to be damn proud of it.

The Problem

I had a crush on a blockmate before. She had a very nice body, dressed herself extremely well with noticeable signature clothing and looked like a princess. When I approached her, all of it changed. If you’re thinking she had a rotten attitude, that’s not it. My problem was that she had a rotten smell. (Mmm. I can still remember the odour…)

The shirts are good as they’re hot and reaching thousands, but at the same time, they’re only making us look good without fixing what’s inside. Although we’re gaining a sense of nationalism from them, to what end does this nationalism lead to when our very core as a nation is ambiguous?

What use is nationalism when we don’t have a nation?

The Challenge

Shirts and other nationalistic movements have been successful in creating a desire to have a nation. They’ve been extremely successful in increasing awareness that we, as a country, have to have our own brand. That’s a good thing.

But first, we have to take a step back and look deep into our nation and ask, “What does it truly mean to be a Filipino? What will make us proud to be Filipinos? What do we want to be known for in the global community?”

Then take a step ahead and challenge ourselves, ‘How do we translate the desire these T-shirts have created to real, productive action?”