The 2nd Base shirts aren’t the only edgy brand of breast-cancer apparel out there. Since 2004, Los Angeles designer Julie Fikse has sold more than 80,000 shirts carrying variations on the message “Save the Ta-Tas”—and donated $80,000 of her profits to breast-cancer charities. Both slogans garner mostly chuckles and enthusiasm, though a few people have reacted negatively, criticizing them as too crude. (To counter that, Dugery and Day launched a more demure line carrying the slogan “S2B.”)
Most people under 60 understand what “second base” means, but the motto creates occasional confusion: Dailey recalls watching an American teenager use pantomime to explain the concept to a Japanese foreign-exchange student, and Dailey had to provide a definition for her sixtysomething mother. But usually, “when someone reads it, they get it, they start laughing,” says Dugery, co-owner of the company behind the shirts. And in the face of a devastating disease, a little laughter can feel like a home run.
