How to Make a Statement

53%. If you’ve been paying any sort of attention to U.S. politics since 2016, you’ll have heard that specific number: it’s the percentage of white women who voted for Donald Trump. It’s a small majority, but a majority nonetheless, which leaves the well-meaning 47% who aren’t Trump supporters scrambling to set themselves apart from their more conservative counterparts.

Essentially, they needed a way to communicate that they were one of the good ones: a way to say, “Yes, I am white, but I’m not racist/anti-choice/xenophobic/etc.!” Say to whom, exactly? Why, to their Black barista (whom they never tip), their Asian co-workers (whose names they refuse to learn to pronounce), and any other person of color that they come across but make no real effort to connect with.

In 2016, after first being established in post-Brexit Britain, this signaling was done with safety pins: an innocuous, easy-to-miss, low-commitment little gesture that, accompanied with a sympathetic “I get it” smile to anyone who noticed it, went a long way to help the wearer feel virtuous, but stopped short of helping anyone else. In 2020, it was a black box for Black Lives on Instagram—somehow even less impactful, but infinitely more self-soothing. This election year, it’s blue friendship bracelets.

But, before we get into that, let’s talk about what it means to say “fashion is political.”