Earlier this month, writer and men’s advocate Lisa Britton posted on X about a sweater that Target was promoting in stores ahead of Valentine’s Day. It’s a pink sweater with the phrase “Dump Him” written in bold red letters across the front.
“I saw this sweater promoted at Target today,” the post reads. “Could you imagine if, in the month leading up to Valentine’s Day, Target was spotlighting a “Dump Her” sweater in the men’s section? People would lose it. I’m so tired of this garbage.”
A lot of people had a lot of thoughts — many of them similar to Britton’s.
“Jordan Peterson once argued that a lot of whats happening in our culture is just attempts at fertility suppression aimed at young women, and now I see it everywhere,” this post from @wokal_distance reads.
Could the Dating Safety App Tea Still Work?
Tea allows women, and only women, to anonymously post reviews of men they’ve gone on dates with“If it feels like there’s a conspiracy to keep everybody angry, lonely, and scrolling… Well, that’s because there functionally is. Messages praising disconnection and isolation are EVERYWHERE,” this whacky post from user @GShaneMorris said.
So what is it, then? Fertility suppression? Target’s war on Valentine’s Day? The woke agenda keeping everyone polarized? Or is all of this, and hear me out, completely absurd?
“Dump him” is a phrase commonly used in internet culture, especially in recent years — like back in 2019, via The Independent — and variations of it are still evolving and being used.
Usually, you can find it in a post or comment that has to do with encouraging a woman to break up with her partner, especially if it’s under a post where an upsetting relationship issue is occurring and a woman clearly needs to leave in order to get herself in a better situation.
It’s been put on many shirts, written on cakes and shouted out loud as part of viral trends. It’s often used as casually as a greeting. The phrase means exactly what it says, to literally go ahead and break up with your male partner, but it also says something else on a larger scale. It’s become colloquial and casual, a go-to response that society, as a collective, has gotten very comfortable with saying, and saying more frequently — even if it’s just being commented on a stranger’s social media post. It’s important to remember that comfortability and frequency, especially when it comes to women calling out bad behavior on public platforms, isn’t bad.
Sure, there are also situations where it’s just being said sarcastically on a post or being used too often in a situation that doesn’t need that level of commentary. The good news here? You have free will. You don’t have to buy this sweater or break up with anyone because you think a Target sweater is telling you to. For those who are feeling particularly sensitive about this sweater, you probably have some much larger relationship issues to worry about here.
And for every post I saw critiquing this sweater, there were many tasteful, hilarious comments, like “At some point you’ll just have to stop taking everything so seriously,” from one user. “Then stay with him then, idk,” said another. “If this makes you mad you NEED to dump him,’ wrote another.
There were also comments that brought up some decent points.
There’s a lot of name-calling in the posts that are supportive of the original. Here’s a list of just a few of the ones left on the original post.
- “I want a sweater that says ‘she’s too fat’”
- “This sweater is the hallmark of girl with no personality.”
- “People would lose it over a ‘Dump Her’ sweater because women cannot handle it. The fact that this ‘Dump Him’ sweater exists is actually patronizing to women, but they don’t see that.”
- “Women love this kind of thing, awful people!”
- “This is the uniform for dumpy 4’s that need to lose 40lbs.”
It’s incredibly ironic that people are resorting to calling women fat or awful because they’re so offended by a sweater that has nothing to do with them. A lot of it ties back to “manosphere” content — social media posts and videos that are disguised as ways that young men can better their lives. More often than not, there’s usually harmful discourse or misogynistic messaging behind them. A segment from PBS that debuted last year shows a few examples of this. In one podcast clip, a man says, “Women sell purity. Men sell success.” In another video, a young man says into a camera that “the average woman will always cheat more than the average man.”
It’s all pretty troubling, and ultimately, I’d like to believe that this sweater is a nonsensical issue that no one really cares about. It just seems like a lot of grown adults are genuinely scared about the influence that a Target sweater is going to have on a lot of adult women, which is also quite troubling. I guess only time can tell from here, but check back in for an update on this article a month from now if we find out that this sweater canceled Valentine’s Day once and for all or something.
Meet your guide
More Like This
This article appeared in an InsideHook newsletter. Sign up for free to get more on travel, wellness, style, drinking, and culture.
