Don’t knock it til you’ve tried it. In colder climates, wearing long-sleeved undershirts can mean the difference between comfort and misery. Same thing goes for longhandle underwear. When I was first married, I learned to sleep in longjohns AND a flannel nightie, because our cruddy apartment didn’t have good heating.
I wear sleeveless (sometimes) because I perspire heavily year round. In fact I can pit-soak a dress shirt thru a tee, so sometimes I wear a sleeveless just to be cooler. Almost never will I wear a dress shirt over nothing; it’d have a huge heart-shaped dark splotch inside of 5 minutes.
Man, where have you been? 
I worked at a clothing store a few years ago (women’s clothing) and we got wifebeaters in. We were all lectured that we can’t go calling them wifebeaters in front of the customers, that is rude!. Then when we asked what to call them, the manager had no clue for a bit. She ended up saying to call them “Muscle shirts”.
Every single person who came in asking for them would say, “do you have the wifebeaters in yet?”
I find them lighter and more comfortable under other clothes than a regular t-shirt.
I’ve frequently heard them called “Guinea Tees” due to their association with the sweaty, hairy chested and adorned with gold chains stereotype/caricature of Italian-Americans, especially those in Brooklyn/Staten Island/New Jersey.
I always though muscle shirts had more of a traditional crew-style neck and were simply a sleeveless tee.
WB wearer checking in.
I wear them because I like an extra layer of fabric between my nipples and my shirts, especially t-shirts or oxford knit polos, but I hate two layers of fabric over my arms.
I also like to wear them just by themselves around the house. Yes, with some kind of pants, smartass.
Funny thing is that (and maybe this is just regionalism) where I grew up in the Pacific Northwest we used “tank top” to refer to the ones with the narrow (1" or so) shoulder straps, and “muscle shirt” to refer to what was basically a T-shirt without the sleeves. The first time I heard the term "wifebeater’, it was specifically referring to the “muscle shirt” variety, and I was surprised when I first heard it applied to “tank tops” by people in other parts of the country.
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=wifebeater&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2
WARNING: some images may not be SFW
Wow there’s a website that caters to people that want to buy dirty clothing worn by prisoners.
Yup, what he said. Exactly. Are you me? :eek:
Which site was that?
prisonstudstore dot com (NSFW) which seems to have a rather large showing in a google images search for “wifebeater” (with safe search off)
Used sweaty prison clothing? What is going on here…?
People have been selling used underwear online for years. It’s not that surprising.
I just wish I had the balls to set up a business like that.
We call them ‘vests’ here (Ireland) (and what some of you probably call ‘vests’ we call ‘waistcoats’). I would concur with the nipples and chest/ body hair hiding reasons. For this reason my husband should wear one but doesn’t. :o Oh well… :