Why is wife beater called that

While each story is slightly different about the exact origins, the idea behind all of them is the same. Over the years, this shirt has become a shorthand symbol in pop culture of drunken, slovenly men who either beat their wives or look like they do. And, while domestic violence is a serious issue, this name for the shirts is referring to a despicable class of men, not condoning what they may do. When Hollywood first started making movies in the early 20t century, they had picture shows before they had the ability to add sound.

This is why the first big movies were silent films. To communicate the story and the character traits in these silent movies, Hollywood had to develop a shorthand for different ideas. For example, people with black hats were bad and white hats were good. To denote a husband character who was mean and possibly beat his wife, they would put him in a ratty sleeveless undershirt, which would become the reason they started calling that type of shirt a wife beater tank top.

It happened in real life too. There is a famous case and ensuing newspaper picture from that may have helped give the wife beater its name. That year, in Detroit, a man named James Hartford Jr. Another pop culture explanation of the wife beater shirt coincides with the decades where these shirts went beyond a simple undershirt and became an actual fashion. In the 80s and 90s, you start to see the wife beater tank tops become more a part of mainstream fashion.

At that time, one of the first reality shows came on television, the show COPS. The show followed real cops as they chased bad guys of all sorts. The term has since become far past antiquated, yet it's still prevalent in our vocabulary and at retail stores, many of which label tank tops by the term to this day. In fact, if you search "wife beaters" on Amazon, you'll get several options of men's tank tops to choose from.

Tank tops of this variety became more prominent during this time due to their low price tag and comfortable fit. What's more, iconic male celebrities, like rappers 50 Cent and Eminem, often sported the top, further popularizing the trend and contributing to its intimidating and cool reputation.

The term and its implications are inappropriate and offensive, and should be abandoned for countless reasons—one being that sleeveless ribbed tank tops of this variety have taken on a whole new identity as of late.

Sleeveless tank tops are the casual dresser's bread and butter—comfortable, practical, and generally inexpensive. They can be dressed up or dressed down, and sported for any occasion that permits an exposed shoulder. As of , sleeveless ribbed tank tops are far more often sported by young women.

Even as they started popping up in almost every gangster movie, the shirts still hadn't earned the name "wife-beater" and were still referred to as "undershirts. In , Valerie Steele of the Fashion Institute of Technology, told the New York Times she first started hearing "wife-beater" referring to the tank top in the late s. Jesse Sheidlower, then-principal editor of the Oxford English Dictionary's American office, also told the Times the term emerged around , in what was a confluence of rising "rap, gay and gang subcultures.

Those subcultures came together in a pop culture vortex over the course of the '90s, with fashion and popular entertainment birthing a new clothing staple. As for fashion, popular rappers like Snoop Dogg commonly wore undershirts, as did fashionable women with their oh-so-'90s flared jeans — picture Kate Moss in her Calvins.

In the same era, movies like Goodfellas and TV shows like Cops — in which men wearing white undershirts made regular appearances when being arrested for beating their wives — were becoming pop culture staples, as was hip-hop music as America's prevailing musical genre. Why we still say it: Since , the term has been cemented in our sartorial vernacular. For years, it has been seen, heard and read by most of us — mostly without controversy. Just take several recent comments by fashion insiders.

In a conversation with Who What Wear in , Nasty Gal founder Sophia Amoruso said she "wore a wife-beater , Dickies and skate shoes, all with a studded belt" to her first job interview. In January, a stylist told Vogue , "I would always put the girls in some variation of a customized wife-beater and pair of customized jeans. But persistent though it is in colloquial speech, there is a counter-conversation happening.

Retailers already see them as unacceptable.