After Nassar, East Lansing T-shirt designer offers help with 'No More. #MeToo'

This article originally appeared in the Lansing State Journal:

EAST LANSING – By day Austin Pabian works as a graphic designer for an education group. By night, he creates “drinking team” tanks and T-shirts for fraternities and other party crowds at Michigan State University.

Now the 23-year-old entrepreneur is using his skills to promote the #MeToo movement. Upset at the revelations of sexual abuse of gymnasts and other athletes by former MSU sports doctor Larry Nassar, Pabian decided to fashion teal-colored T-shirts for men and women in time for Sexual Assault Awareness Month in April.

The T-shirts cost $15 each, including mailing costs, and Pabian will donate all profits — about $10 a shirt — to Lansing sexual assault awareness groups. One shirt reads “No More. #MeToo.” A second version has a more graphic adjective inserted between “No” and “More.”

Pabian said he was stunned listening to the impact statements of more than 200 survivors over nine days of court in two counties.

“I was baffled. As I’m sure most people can agree, I had no idea that was going on,” he said. “It was shell shocking.”

Pabian’s girlfriend, Robyn Lowes, pursued gymnastics throughout childhood and was on a club team at MSU. She graduated last year. She knows some of the Larry Nassar survivors and looked up to other of the gymnasts.

The January impact statements affected her deeply.

She cried a lot. Pabian wanted to help her.

“He kept saying, ‘What can I do? What can I do?’’’ Lowes recalled. “He said, ‘I wish I could do something,’”

He found that something by combining the teal T-shirt with the #MeToo movement…

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE. TO ORDER A TEE, VISIT FIREWATERAPPAREL.CO/METOO.

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