Music

Coachella's sister festival was selling these homophobic shirts

by Mark Teo

While Coachella is no stranger to questionable festival garb, usually, the attendees—not the festival—are to blame. Most offensive apparel is brought into the festival; you don’t typically find racist, homophobic, or sexist things for sale on fest grounds. That’s what makes the shirt above, spotted for sale at California’s Stagecoach especially surprising.

Stagecoach, of course, is Coachella’s country-music sister festival, and it draws some of the genre’s biggest names: 2015’s festival is headlined by Tim McGraw, Miranda Lambert, and Blake Shelton (the latter of which featured a clumsy, if well-intentioned, anti-racist video in “Boys Round Here”). According to Consequence of Sound, the vendor selling the shirt has since been removed from the festival grounds.

It’s be an error to dismiss the festival—and the genre—as homophobic; everyone from Kacey Musgraves to Ty Herndon to Shane McAnally have challenged the genre’s reputation as less-than-gay-friendly. But this shirt (along with the other shirt pictured, which reads, “Roses Are Red, Areolas Are Pink, Show Me Yours And I’ll Buy You A Drink”) also highlights the genre’s uglier side—the side that criticized “Girl Crush,” a song about a straight romance, for “advancing the gay agenda.” Ugh. [H/T Consequence of Sound]