Essential worker merchandise is suddenly everywhere.

“Essential AF” T-shirt available in the MyCustomTees store on Etsy.

From T-shirts, tumblers and candles, to stickers, mugs, headwear, hoodies and more, branded merch celebrating people working on the frontlines of the COVID-19 fight is appearing in profusion.

Web-based platforms for selling merchandise and arts/crafts like Etsy, Teespring and Redbubble are replete with a range of “essential employee” offerings from various third-party makers.

In an interesting article in The Atlantic, staff writer Kaitlyn Tiffany notes that the phrase “Essential AF” has gained particular popularity, being emblazoned across a variety of products available on Etsy. Tiffany articulated the popularity of the phrase – and suggested one important reason why essential worker merchandise has become a cultural phenomenon. While she was writing about Etsy and female essential workers in particular, her insights would seem to apply generally.

Most essential workers are women, as are most Etsy sellers making "Essential AF" T-shirts—the bizarre pandemic souvenirs that will remind us whose lives were put at highest risk, @kait_tiffany reports. https://t.co/F8lnH2E6Sn

— The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) April 27, 2020

“The dissonance between the gravity of the moment and the whimsy of cheaply made merch is startling, but not entirely inexplicable,” Tiffany writes. “Essential AF shirts are selling like crazy, and their popularity speaks to the slightly twisted ways in which we are struggling to boost our own morale during a once-in-a-century plague.”

Essential worker 12-ounce stainless steel tumbler available from CustomCutConcepts on Etsy.

Tiffany continued: “Essential AF, jarring as it is as a phrase, can be read as a rueful wink and a clear-eyed brag — a statement on cheap cotton that the wearer’s life has been chosen as one to be risked and that she is making the best of a horrible situation.”

Candle for essential workers available from BaumDesignsShop on Etsy.

Practically all the merchandise is aimed at people who are themselves essential workers. Messaging on products speaks to this. For instance, shirts on Redbubble bear screen-printed phrasing like “I’m An Essential Worker So Basically I’m A Big Deal,” “Essential Worker 2020 The One That Couldn’t Quarantine,” “Yup, I’m Essential,” and the darker gallows-humor “Can’t Tell If I’m Essential Or Just Sacrificial.”

T-shirt available on Redbubble from ArtSlave1992.

On Teespring, there was a bunch of merch celebrating particular essential professions. An example would be “I Can’t Shelter In Place. I’m A Nurse!” – or any number of other professions, from police officer and firefighter, to doctor, postal worker and paramedic.

T-shirt available from Lee’s Tees on Teespring.

Third-party sellers on Amazon were also busy producing essential worker merchandise, like the T-shirt below that’s a nod to grocery workers.

T-shirt available from Osborna Arrt on Amazon.

Essential-worker merch is “selling like hot cakes,” Trisha Woods, an Etsy seller from Grand Rapids, MI told Tiffany in The Atlantic article. “My Etsy account is so out of control right now. I’ve never sold this much stuff ever.”