About the Strong Athletic Grown-Ass Woman Crop Top Racerback in Mauve with Black Ink
In 2013 Nadia Kean, owner of Strong Athletic, started her apparel company with her token shirt "Strong Athletic Woman" because she wanted to be a walking billboard to teach the world that it was inappropriate to call her a "girl". She wanted to help to make the word "woman" an everyday descriptive word used to describe adult females. The shirt was in essence a protest to adult women being infantilized and called "girls", while their counterparts were referred to as "men" or "guys".
That was Then, This is Now
In 2018, it is becoming more and more clear that the world does not respect women as a gender, as a voting group, as a movement. Women are still told to stand down, wait for their turn, speak when spoken to and that their safety is unimportant. Women are told that their most horrifying experiences never happened or that they happened because it was their fault. Women are paid less, expected to raise their country's next generation, yet we still remain the "second sex".
Women in Sports
In athletics it is no different. Girls are treated differently on the field and in sports than boys. Few girls play sports beyond high school. Even fewer play sports after college. Most elite female athletes will never see the pay in their lifetime that a minimally skilled male athlete will make in a season. The justification is that women's sports are unexciting, less aggressive and they do not deserve the coverage of men's sports.
Naturally, I'm Over It, I Bet You are Too.
Many women feel that they need to obtain permission. They feel this way in their jobs and they feel this way in their hobbies. In roller derby, some athletes feel that they need permission to play the sport. For what ever reason, they have been made to feel that they are unequal to their teammates, that they don't belong, that they should hang up their skates. At Strong Athletic we believe that this is a travesty and we just want to say this: You are a grown-ass woman (or human) and you do not need permission.
If you're on social media, and take photos in your new Strong Athletic Grown-ass Woman tank, please tag us so we can see what you're up to! These are the tags we use for Strong Athletic #strongathletic , #strongathleticgrownasswoman These are some other tags we like a lot: #grownasswoman , #womeninsport , #strongwoman , #strongwomen
About the Production of this Strong Athletic Shirt
We know that there are a few companies that make awesome shirts with great slogans and sayings across the front. One thing we notice is that our shirts are usually about $5-$10 more expensive than the other shirts on the market. Ever wonder why there is such a price difference? There's a good chance that some of those companies are simply producing more shirts, faster, and so their overhead costs are lower. We can't speak for them and how they set their prices, but we can speak for ourselves. At Strong Athletic, we only use small-scale screen printers and the garments that we print on are always made in W.A.R.P. Certified facilities. We also pay all of our contract employees a pay rate that is in line with living wage standards. The majority of our shirts are associated with a non-profit and we donate a portion of profits (sometimes 100% of profits) to causes that hold dear. We believe that when products are cheap, someone is losing out on income. We don't want those people to be anyone involved in our supply chain or who work for Strong Athletic on a daily basis.
Every single Strong Athletic product is produced by a small scale screen printer or embroidery shop. Our snapback hats are embroidered by a small-scale, local embroidery shop called Vistago Print in Lago Vista Texas. The majority of our shirts are printed by Amanda in Austin, Texas who prints out of the Austin Screen Printer's Coop, a screen printing shop that is member owned and run in East Austin. When our shirts are not printed by Amanda they are printed by other small-scale screen printers such as Second Avenues Ink in Portland, Oregon or Leigh Valley Apparel Creations in Pennsylvania. The art for this design was created by Strong Athletic founder Nadia Kean. The Strong Athletic logo was created by Angel Ortega in 2015, until that point our shirts had the Get Smarty Coaching logo on them.
Every Strong Athletic Shirt comes wrapped in our signature "You are so Strong" wraps which are held together with a kraft Strong Athletic sticker. Each shirt is then packaged in a biodegradable kraft mailer that we get from a US based company called EcoEnclose. We include a postcard that shares the origin story of Strong Athletic and that is addressed by hand to the person receiving the shirt. Also included in every package is a Strong Athletic logo sticker and one of our "We Believe" stickers. Every time you open a package from Strong Athletic we want it to feel special, especially if you're sending the Strong Athletic shirt as a gift.
People either buy Strong Athletic for theirselves or for their friends. Because our shirts, hats and fanny packs are so often sent to people as gifts, we decided that we wanted to make the experience of opening a Strong Athletic package feel like you're opening a gift. When your package from Strong Athletic arrives, you'll immediately notice that the kraft mailer is biodegradable and that it's covered in our removable signature "We Believe" sticker. Opening the package you will find your shirt, wrapped in a "You are so Strong" wrapper. In addition to whatever you purchased you'll also find a few of our signature logo stickers and a smaller "We Believe" sticker, plus a postcard with the origin story of our company hand written to the recipient of the package. If you're sending this as a gift to a friend, you can have us include a hand-written message and we'll sign your name for you. Just write out what you want written on the notes in the comment section of the cart.
