Part of my morning commute usually involves trekking through the tunnel between the Sixth Avenue L train station and the 14th Street 1-2-3 station. It’s like a supercollider powered by anger, all the individual particles seeing just how fast they can zip around each other from urine-soaked end to another.

This morning, as I ascended the stairs from the L platform, I spotted a young lady whose outfit–particularly, a pair of tiny shorts–suggested she was on her way to or from the gym. If the clothing didn’t give this away, her bearing would have. Her hair was up in that kind of ponytail that only women at the gym have–short, severe, yet completely symmetrical and untouched. And she just carried herself in this very athletic “I’m in great shape” manner. I sensed a scooped-out bagel in her immediate future.

None of this is remarkable. The back of her shirt, however, was. She wore a bright red tee with white writing that read:

THOSE WHO SACRIFICE BEAUTY FOR EFFICIENCY
GET WHAT THEY DESERVE.

Holy crap! I haven’t heard a slogan that confrontational since “It’s Nerf or nothing.”

Words like this shouldn’t be on t-shirts. They should be hanging from the rafters during a fascist rally, in a country with a military junta led by Anna Wintour. Is there a paramilitary organization I don’t know about, filled with perfectly toned female assassins who can kill a man with their thighs and look wonderful while doing it?

In truth, this quasi-Ayn Rand-ian trope was followed by a URL for what appears to be an A/V systems integration firm in North Carolina. Nothing about their Web site suggests they are training an unholy army of the night to murder us all fabulously in our sleep. But then again, that’s what they’d like us to believe, isn’t it?