when I’ve never even been married?
At one time a poster wanted to know what the purpose of wife beaters was. It seemed clear to me that they served no purpose at all; it fact, they were criminals.
But I read the thread anyway.
And I learned s/he was talking about a kind of (under)shirt, without sleeves, which is usually just called a “tank top.” There were good pro and con answers, but I imagine the OP was probably from some northern place where the weather is not so consistanly hot. The best answer to me was that if you’re in a place that is so hot your armpits are going to sweat through to anything you wear over the “regular” T-shirt—you just get that much hotter. And some places have signs which still say: “No shoes, no shirt, no service.” One place where one would have a very good reason to wear a wife beater is at a gym. So if you’re at home or at the beach, or at a place where no one minds, why not wear a “wife beater.” But I’d never wear one to my grandmother’s funeral, or to meet the president.
And another thing: look at the kind of things people like Britney Spears wears. Is she a “husband beater” (maybe that’s why the marriage was so short). Even my own girlfriend wears things that only a chihuahua could fit into. And not only that, but they say pretty “risqué” things, such as: “Mining for Man Money,” or “Just taste this, honey.” But even when I explain the connotations of the expressions, she just shrugs her shoulders and says: “Well, it was cheap, and it looks good.” (Maybe too good, from some of the ogles she’s gotten, I say.) But I can’t really blame her. She’s from Colombia, and the first time she saw a KFC she asked me if “Coronel Sanders” had been one of our presidents. She’s not completely ignorant; just adjusting to U.S. culture, but that was one of the funniest things I’d ever heard.
Anyway, in Los Angeles you see quite a few otherwise very conservative, middle-aged women wearing these things, with similar slogans.
Then I had a revelation: “Wow! I used to wear wife beaters myself!” I did a little Googling, and found a site that said they came slightly back into vogue in the mid 90s. I find this somewhat suspicious, but a review of my photos shows that if so, I’m guilty.
In any case, I’d like to show first, that “wife beaters” are not always worn by men, contrary to myth: . Sara obvioulsy was one–just look at her.
I don’t know if she had a secret wife to beat.
Next, here’s myself, in my first, horrible entrée into the world of wife beating:
Then the next step.
Then the next stetp…
I’ve since kicked the habit–cold turkey. It required air-conditioning in both my care and house. But they say, “Once a wife beater, always a wife beater.” So I’ve got to stay away from those shirts.
Now I know that wives get beaten significantly more than husbands, (and I have complete contempt of any form of spousal abuse–I don’t mean to make fun of a serious social problem). I think you should have realized by now that this is purely a fashion statement. Domestic violence is a horrible and very sad thing. But still, I have other (photographic) evidence that it’s not only men who “beat their wives.”
So the questions for Dopers is: "Should we continue this term? And how did it come into being? It couldn’t simply have been “A Street Car Named Desire.”
