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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.

. . . they apologized because it upset the members of the Domestic Violence Industry, Inc. -- not because it's blatantly offensive to men in general.

We used to call those shirts "athletic shirts" or "athletic tees," didn't we? Why don't we just go back to calling them by their real names?

__________________
* *
-- Paul W. (The Benzadmiral)
('03 Buick Park Avenue, charcoal/cream)
Formerly:
'97 C230, smoke silver/parchment; '86 420SEL, anthracite/light grey; '84 280CE (W123), dark blue/palomino

'cause "wife beater" really is pretty funny

That's what we call em around here. I tried to think of a PC term for the thread is Domestic Motivator OK?

Heck, even MY wife calls them "wife-beaters"...

__________________
2009 ML350 (106K) - Family vehicle
2001 CLK430 Cabriolet (80K) - Wife's car
2005 BMW 645CI (138K) - My daily driver
2016 Mustang (32K) - Daughter's car

So does mine.
And - I hate to admit it, but I had no idea what she was talking about until she pointed one out to me one day a few years back.

__________________
1980 300D - Veggie Burner !

Mine too. Kowalski's too.

Never heard the term before. Here's what Wikipedia says:

"The origin of the term [wife beater] is from the stereotype that the shirts are worn predominantly by men who beat their wives; black tank tops were often worn by Ike Turner, a notorious abuser of his wife Tina. In the 1980 movie Raging Bull, the main character, a boxer, is commonly seen wearing tank tops around the house, including in one scene where he beats his wife. Countless drunk and disorderly domestic abuse suspects who were arrested on the TV show Cops also wear such shirts."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wife_beater_(slang)

__________________
...Tracy

'00 ML320 "Casper"
'92 400E "Stella"