Domestic motivator t-shirts.

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Flier Describes T-Shirts As 'Wife-Beaters'
Company Apologizes, Plans Retraction

POSTED: 6:38 pm EST February 21, 2006
UPDATED: 7:45 pm EST February 21, 2006
BOSTON -- Building 19, a discount store known for its quirky sales circulars, described a package of sleeveless T-shirts as "wife-beaters" in a recent sales flier.

NewsCenter 5's Kelley Tuthill reported Tuesday that even store officials admitted that the flier went too far. It upset advocates for domestic violence victims.

"I can't say what I thought. I know what I thought, but I can't say out loud what I thought," Jane Doe Inc. spokeswoman Mary Lauby said.

The flier advertised a three-pack of men's undershirts as "wife-beaters."

"That does, you know, go to numbing and dumbing down and normalizing and suggesting that battering is a normal behavior," Lauby said.

Building 19 spokesman Jerry Ellis took the criticism seriously.

"They were right. It was awful and I am sorry it happened," Ellis said.

E-mails came into the discount store's Hingham headquarters where everyone was apologetic.

"It's a slang expression, a street expression, but we should have known better not to use it. I am supposed to read every word. Sometimes it's busy or I am lazy. We are working on a retraction," Ellis said.