‘DARK HARBOUR,’ the campaign begins, ‘is inspired by what makes up 60% of our bodies and 70% of the earth’.
‘Dead skin cells?’ you think.
‘Water,’ the advertisement proclaims.
No, it’s not the new Terminator sequel: it’s a pair of cement-grey scrubs, ready for action. The only body of water they resemble is the effluent flowing into your local storm drain. ‘Get to the bleeper!’ you yell, confusing your Arnold Schwarzenegger films, falling over yourself to purchase these. Just one set of top and bottom scrubs in this colour will set you back an eye-watering $216 AUD but you don’t mind because work has become synonymous with life and it was only a matter of time before (like other industries have for decades) the line between worker and consumer in medicine has become irrevocably blurred.
It is not enough to simply toil away our lives in the windowless, groaning, stagnant House of God – we must also Consume.
The emergence of Covid-19 in early 2020 saw the beginning of an even worse pandemic: the boutique scrub. At first it was just doctors on the coalface (respiratory, intensive care, etc) that said goodbye to the historic collared shirt, pencil skirt or pantsuit, and said hello to bland navy blue shapeless sacks. This, of course, in addition to nursing staff on all frontiers who had been braving it in standard-issue scrubs for years prior.
Slowly, however, as is the way of the late capitalist hellscape we inhabit, the sound of the saliva of hand-rubbing entrepreneurial types hitting the floor could be heard around the world.
FIGS brand, of course, probably experienced the greatest spike in sales, having been the Apple equivalent (cool, sleek, ludicrously expensive) in medical workwear for at least a few years before the pandemic hit. Pretty soon, you were seeing doctors and nurses in shades of mauve, sea-green and midnight blur past you, like a car accident at a Dulux factory. Even the radiologists were wearing scrubs now. The marketing is by far the most irritating thing. It’s like an AI generated campaign trained only by watching episodes of Grey’s Anatomy. The more ridiculous the design, the more expensive they get. Take, for instance, the high collar lab coat in shades of either ‘bonsai’ or ‘willow’ (traditionally known as ‘green’ and ‘brown’), which will set you back over $200 AUD. The model looks like a space captain in a bad knock-off Star Trek. If you wanted to look like even more of an arsehole just add a scrub top with – I shit you not – the words ‘JUST SAVING LIVES, NBD’ on the lapel.
Never mind the heinous marketing campaign that saw FIGS temporarily shunned for all of about five minutes in 2020 after they featured a female doctor reading an upside-down copy of Medical Terminology for Dummies.
Other brands like Airmed and Scrub Lab in Australia seized slices of the medical market. They effectively copied the FIGS model, but with worse colours, down to the annoying jogger-style pant. Minty Teal and Candy Pink? Come on guys - do like… wool scrubs or something. There’s an idea: Ugg Scrubs. You could even call them ScrUggs. That one’s for free.
Even more infuriating than these FIGS-lite copycat brands, was the admittedly smart move into the scrubs market by long-time boutique clown outfitters, Gorman. Even just perusing the webpage for their scrubs now brings a little bit of sick up in the back of my throat. Half the designs look like analogue television test-patterns, the other half look like they’ve taken the ‘interesting sock’ idea and made it a whole outfit. You need to break bad news to a patient’s family member, you can now do it wearing a hundred tiny cartoon pineapples. Having a bad week at work? Go on, wear your seizure-inducing pyjamas that make you look like a walking Ishihara test. You deserve it. (Disclaimer: Gorman scrubs have never been proven to cause seizures, and I can’t afford a lawyer to defend me for libel).
Above: It’s 2035 and this is what the Wiggles look like now. ABBA are now 600 years old and touring Australia in their cryogenic pods. You still can’t get Taylor Swift tickets.
Above: the last scene of Blair Witch Project, but more terrifying
Ultimately, the common thread between all these scrubs retailers is one opportunistic hand around the throat and another in the pocket of the clinician, in a profession already laden with huge financial outgoings. Here we see the clinical professions burdened with carrying the cost of caring for others. The expense and luxury nature of some of these items introduces a competitive appeal in the workplace that means RM Williams boots are no longer the primary indicator of status/wealth. Not that that should necessarily be missed. In an effort to make everyone look like an individual, we all end up looking the same. Just some of us more ridiculous than others. There was something nostalgic about those first few weeks of the pandemic. I’d gladly go back to a time where a radiologist and I would be wearing the same baggy blues, comrades in arms, sacrificing fashion in a monastic pursuit of strict functionality. Most of the most popular scrubs don’t even meet basic washing requirements for bodily fluid exposure, assuming this is the primary reason for wearing scrubs in the first place. Despite Victoria Health’s recommendation that healthcare worker uniforms be laundered “after each wear at the hottest temperature that the items can withstand”, FIGS recommend a cold wash only then tumble dry at low heat for their scrubs, failing at even their most basic function: hygiene.
The capitalist project within the public healthcare space is gaining momentum through deliberate under-funding of systems like the NHS and Medicare. That includes the pernicious invasion of multinational companies into unexpected sectors of the industry. But we must expect the unexpected. Two hallmarks of neoliberal capitalism: hyper-individualism and mass consumption are being introduced in ways we don’t even notice anymore, because we’re too distracted by the colours.
Don’t worry, they’ll always remind us that we’re out here ‘just saving lives, nbd’.
Dude what nurse in seizure inducing scrubs hurt you omg go outside and breathe the fresh air 😳
Nodding in agreement with most of this, definitely let’s lose the psychedelic prints! But the perspective I’m missing is for those, amongst whom I count myself, that are not catered for in the ‘average’ scrub selection provided by the employer. Yes the shapeless, unisex (read: for male bodies), and often damaged scrubs in the linen cupboard get washed at 1 million degrees in carbolic soap, but if they don’t even fit onto my body, or restrict my ability to do my job, does that make them more or less safe?
Until hospitals provide clothing that is acceptable to a wider range of bodies, I’ll have to continue spending my pennies on boutique scrubs. Blue, obviously, like my mood.