Threads of Resistance
I'm delighted to share my latest essay, now published as part of the inaugural Semiotic Sisterhood quarterly collection. In it, I examine how slogan tees have evolved into modern cultural battlegrounds, using Conner Ives' provocative "Protect the Dolls" t-shirt as a lens to explore broader questions about identity, activism, and commercial messaging.
This piece sits alongside six other fascinating essays from Carla Moss, Liz Hetherington, Hannah Hoel, Su Luo, Elinor Lifshitz, and Ashley Mauritzen - each unpacking different cultural codes that shape our world in ways both subtle and profound. The range of topics is genuinely wonderful,
Huge thanks to Hannah Hoel and Carla Moss for creating this collaborative space where cultural analysts can dig deeper into the signs and symbols surrounding us. I'm excited to see how this collection develops over the coming quarters.
Read the full collection of essays here: https://semioticsisterhood01.my.canva.site/
You can also read my individual essay below.
On a February night before his Autumn/Winter '25 collection show at London Fashion Week, Conner Ives took a white T-shirt from his deadstock pile and pressed three words onto it with heat-transfer paper: "Protect the Dolls." It took only a few minutes. And then he wore that T-shirt on the runway, and it became a wearable political statement.
What happened next? Cultural wildfire. Pedro Pascal wore it to a Marvel premiere. Troye Sivan wore it at Coachella. Tilda Swinton wore it on Instagram. What started as the designer's last-minute idea, has already raised $70,000 (£52,000) in pre-sale purchases for Trans Lifeline. It established "Protect the Dolls" as both a statement and fundraiser, and THE slogan T-shirt of 2025.
Performative digital activism is everywhere. A black square on your Instagram feed. A shared infographic urging you to “educate yourself.” By contrast, a slogan T-shirt offers something tangible, something real. And it turns your body into a billboard for what you stand for.
In 2025, trans rights are increasingly under threat globally. As of April 2025, the US had 910 anti-trans bills across 49 states under consideration, with 103 passed and 731 active. In the same month, the UK Supreme Court ruled that the terms “sex,” “man,” and “woman” in the Equality Act 2010 refer to biological sex as registered at birth; not to gender identity or acquired gender. Will a slogan tee solve any of this? Probably not. But it’s part of a long history of political protest, like Katharine Hamnett's "Choose Life" confronting Margaret Thatcher.
After what Conner Ives calls a "groundswell of interest," he now offers pre-orders of the T-shirt for £75, with all proceeds being donated. This can be seen as capitalism taking on its own critique, resistance within the same systems it seeks to challenge. Which raises the question: what is different about "Protect the Dolls?" And what does it reveal about how we could protest in a way that doesn’t feel performative?
When Pascal, Sivan, and Swinton wore that shirt, they weren't just putting on a piece of clothing. They became part of a complex sign system. Those three words changing meaning depending on who's wearing them, where they are, and what's happening in the world around them.
First, let’s look at the visual recognition. The black text in serif capital letters on white cotton screams activism: clean, urgent, impossible to ignore. But that same visual DNA shifts depending on context. Pascal at a Marvel premiere? That’s celebrity support with personal depth (his transgender sister). Me at my local Tesco? That's a different discussion.
Next, let’s consider the danger signals. "Protect" doesn't exist in a vacuum; it points at threat by connecting the slogan with the legislative attacks on trans rights. But this can vary by location. In Texas, which has a state ban on gender-affirming care, the T-shirt signals urgency. In Brighton, which hosts the first Trans Pride event in Europe, it could highlight broader cultural issues.
What we're seeing isn't a floating signifier that loses referential stability. The anchor point (transfeminine safety and solidarity) is a persistent political referent. It rather functions as a multivalent sign, collecting meaning as it is shared, yet keeping its political core. Each new context adds depth to the interpretation, without diluting its intended message.
Let's talk about "dolls." Because this isn't just any word, and the politics surrounding it matter more than the original buzz might suggest. "Doll" is loaded with cultural meaning:
In Black and Latino queer communities, "doll" emerged from the ballroom culture of the 1980s as an affirming, insider term for trans women and transfeminine people.
In drag communities, it’s used playfully and affectionally among performer to highlight someone’s femininity and glamour. This overlaps with its ballroom origins, where a lot of drag traditions are rooted.
For working-class women, the meaning is less about gender identity or performance. It’s often regional or generational slang, sometimes affectionate, sometimes infantilising. It does not have the same insider or affirming connotations that are found in ballroom culture.
In mainstream culture, it’s more often used as a generic term of endearment, implying idealised femininity. It can sometimes carry undertones of nostalgia or objectification.
These aren't just different meanings. When a predominantly white, mainstream celebrity ecosystem uses language taken from marginalised trans communities, we're seeing a form of cultural borrowing. That power imbalance shapes how language travels: some meanings are amplified while others are obscured. The language gets separated from its origin. It’s gaining visibility but losing its specificity along the way.
By translating insider language for broader audiences, who would never encounter it otherwise, it can create allyship and solidarity beyond its original community. But it can also flatten cultural practices into easily consumable content for social media.
Here's the uncomfortable question: whose version of "dolls" becomes visible through celebrity endorsement? Which bodies get to embody the phrase with authentic cultural authority versus those performing borrowed legitimacy? And when celebrities model the phrase, they're not just wearing fabric. They're modelling which forms of trans femininity deserves protection and whose fits the mainstream cultural category of "doll," which often reinforce aesthetic norms tied to whiteness, youth, and conventional beauty.
The critique of how “dolls” can be seen as infantilising hits harder. It highlights a tension between care and control. Narratives of “protection” can end up echoing the same paternalizing and exclusionary logic that they aim to avoid. Not every trans woman identifies with the "doll" aesthetic or persona, so it risks emphasizing beauty standards and respectability politics that exclude trans women who don't conform to conventional femininity. While the slogan’s intent is protective, it could reinforce a narrow view of trans femininity: one that aligns protection with conventional beauty and lack of empowerment.
If we want to understand how protest slogan tees go mainstream, we need to follow the celebrity endorsements and see who benefits. Pascal's support carries weight, not just because of his Hollywood visibility, but because of his personal connection via his trans sister. Sivan brings insider credibility as a queer pop icon. Throughout her career, Swinton frequently played roles that challenge or subvert traditional gender binaries. Each celebrity uses their existing fame as cultural currency. The T-shirt merely serves as the delivery system rather than the mark of their authority. That creates a template where trans rights activism can only become visible when famous bodies wear designer clothes.
While Ives's decision to donate proceeds from the sale of the T-shirt stops criticism of profiting off marginalised communities, it also shows how deep the issue of commercialisation is. The donation becomes part of the authenticity story, celebrating it as ethical activism and separating it from corporate rainbow-washing. That distinction relies though on the assumption that ethical activism can exist outside of commercial opportunities. In reality, even donated profits need celebrity endorsement networks, social media algorithms, and fashion industry infrastructure to generate any impact. The contradiction isn't that Ives is somehow fake. His impulse appears genuine and the outcomes appear positive. It's that authenticity itself has become a marketing tool.
Forget the neat evolutionary story from suffragette sashes to punk DIY to viral slogan T-shirts. The real history reveals consistent tensions between respectability and confrontation, mass production and authenticity, insider codes and public accessibility.
The most honest approach? To acknowledge that every viral political moment operates within systems of celebrity, capital, and visibility. The question isn't how to escape those systems but how to use them strategically whilst recognising their constraints.
Take the suffragettes. They didn't simply add political messaging to Victorian dress. Those purple, white, and green sashes weren’t just accessories. They turned decoration into declaration. They offered instant recognition for supporters, while still being legible to those on the outside, who needed to know exactly what they were fighting for.
Punk culture? It simultaneously rejected and embraced commercialisation. Celebrating DIY aesthetics and anti-commercial values, punk fashion quickly became profitable, via fashion boutiques like Vivienne Westwood's SEX shop. The contradiction wasn't accidental. Punk, too, needed to be seen to make its point. It relied on commercial visibility to get its anti-commercial message across.
Contemporary slogan tees inherit these tensions rather than resolving them. Like suffragettes, they work within established clothing categories. Like punk, they navigate the gap between authentic expression and commercial offer. The difference lies in speed and scale, not the contradictions themselves.
What makes "Protect the Dolls" different is that it splits before it unites. It draws lines, then builds bridges. Demanding cultural literacy as the price of entry. Future slogans could layer insider references with wider readability and thereby inviting broader engagement without flattening the cultural depth. These slogans work less like statements and more like puzzles, open to interpretation and layered with meaning. That complexity doesn’t confuse; it pulls people in.
The mechanisms that make messages spread like celebrity endorsement, viral social media post, and simple aesthetic appeal, are the same mechanisms that drive consumer capitalism. The challenge isn't escaping these circuits but using them strategically whilst acknowledging their limitations. Pretending otherwise just makes you look naive.
The gap between authentic solidarity and allyship and cultural appropriation often lies in ongoing relationship rather than one-off gesture. Who benefits materially from increased visibility? Whose version of the struggle gets represented? How do grassroots organisers relate to celebrity-led activism? These aren't afterthoughts. They're foundational questions. This requires understanding your slogan not as fixed communication but as cultural scaffolding that different communities can build upon. You can't control interpretation, but you can influence its direction.
The semiotics of solidarity aren't academic exercises. They’re not just words on fabric. They’re real-life experiences: lived and evolving. When Conner Ives printed those words on a plain white T-shirt, he was tapping into something timeless: the urge to show who we are, and who we stand with, through what we wear.
The real challenge now is making sure solidarity goes beyond the symbolic. For it to matter, it has to connect with the realities that people are living in. Otherwise, it's just performance dressed up as politics. A slogan tee only really matters if it moves power. Otherwise, it’s still just cotton and ink.
