Jess, I love that shirt! You always look great in it.
I'm wearing a hot pink t-shirt that my SIL gave me as a birthday gift last October. It came in a package in mail just before Halloween with the rest of my birthday gifts from that section of my family - my eldest brother and his wife (and by proxy, my sweet little nephew) are the only people in my immediate family who ever mail me birthday presents since I left for college five years ago. Once, my second brother threw a small gift in the box as well, but that was the birthday before last. Everybody else just waits until I come home for Christmas and I remark on something I like as we are shopping for everybody else's gifts together, saying, "Oh! Get it, I'll get it for you. I didn't get you anything for your birthday anyway." Getting the birthday care pack from my big brother and his wife always makes me cry as if on cue. It's one of the only times that that happens and I just let it happen.
My SIL always sends me funny socks and t-shirts; my brother, an obscure jazz CD or two he finds at the record shop. The last thing in there is always a fun Halloween food product because the box always arrives a couple of weeks late for my early October birthday. The one that came with this shirt was a box of bat brownies (brownie mix with a bat-shaped cookie cutter).
The shirt itself was one that I hadn't seen before and was of a level of sass that I suppose could be attributed to me, but it's not one that I would ever choose on my own. First, hot pink? That's a dangerous color for a lady who can easily look like she's 12. Then there's the print on the front - it says:
I'M NOT
PLAYING HARD TO GET
I
AM HARD TO GET
The text is actually in sparkly blue instead of black for "playing" and "am" and there is a sparkly light pink cat looking coy next to the words, with eyes and a collar in the same shade of blue as the two words. I'm sure all the tween girls I know would stab me in the eye with their lip gloss brushes for this shirt.
I hate it and I love it. I wear it ironically, but I then I don't. It fits my body better than any other shirt I own, and my very dear SIL picked it out and gave it to me.
Just a few months ago, I saw it for sale for the first time. In Guatemala this January, I saw it hanging next to two embarrassingly gaudy t-shirts in an awful sports bar and restaurant where my companions and I had stopped to have dinner after wandering for an hour looking for a cheap place to eat. I actually forgot my company and laughed out loud for a second when I saw it, wondering what it was sold next to wherever my SIL found it. Still, I never hesitate to put it on.