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Store Flier Describes T-Shirts As 'Wife-Beaters'
ClickonDetroit ^ | February 22, 2006

Posted on 02/23/2006 3:38:31 AM PST by ShadowDancer

Store Flier Describes T-Shirts As 'Wife-Beaters'

Company Apologizes, Plans Retraction

POSTED: 9:58 am EST February 22, 2006
UPDATED: 11:24 am EST February 22, 2006

BOSTON -- Building 19, a Massachusetts-based discount store known for its quirky sales circulars, described a package of sleeveless T-shirts as "wife-beaters" in a recent sales flier.

WCVB-TV 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.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Miscellaneous; US: Massachusetts
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To: ShadowDancer

We call them wife beaters here. Always have. People get their panties in a twist over everything now days.


41 posted on 02/23/2006 5:17:58 AM PST by processing please hold (Be careful of charity and kindness, lest you do more harm with open hands than with a clinched fist)
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To: normy
"They have been called wife beaters for years because the typical Hollywood wife beater has the tank top undershirt with the stain and the big gut. I call them that and so does everyone I know and we're all in our thirties."

And I think that comes from Marlin Brando playing Stanley Kowalski in Streetcar Named Desire. ("Steeeeellaaaaaa"). Stanley was a brutish thug and wore those shirts in that movie, esp. during the "Stella" scene. I bet that's where it comes from.

42 posted on 02/23/2006 5:22:49 AM PST by joebuck
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To: cyborg
Personally, I don't give a damn what they're called as long as he keeps wearing them.


43 posted on 02/23/2006 5:31:13 AM PST by ShadowDancer (I think I may have the Asian Bird Fru. I mean Flu. (Damn, it's starting already))
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To: ShadowDancer
I used to wear those all the time back when I was a roofer. They were tight fitting and more comfortable than anything else in the heat.

Of course, that was over 20 years ago when I was 6'1" and 175 pounds of lithe, sinewy, lean muscle.
44 posted on 02/23/2006 5:34:08 AM PST by Skooz (Chastity prays for me, piety sings............Modesty hides my thighs in her wings......)
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To: ShadowDancer

"You are completely over the top."

And you continue to miss the point completely. I'll try one more time, then I'm going to hit my pit.

"I am not so narrow minded as to not see how it could bother women who have been beat by their husbands."

Bing, bing, bing, bing: false dichotomy alert. In your world, a person either agrees with the complainers or is "narrow-minded."

Sure, I understand how it could bother them, and I also understand why being bothered by it gives them no standing whatsoever to demand that others change their behavior.

In a just, sane society, a person has to have legitimate grounds to demand that others do or stop doing something. And "Any mention of wife beating offends me because I am hypersensitive beyond all rationality" does not constitute legitimate grounds.

Those shirts are called "wife beaters" because the cultural bigots of hollyweird have made them a cliche. It's a farging joke, fer corn's sake. And we all know what you're supposed to do when people can't take a joke.

"Given that refering to them as just t-shirts would not hurt his business at all"

Sure it would. I wouldn't shop where they didn't know the difference between a t-shirt and a sleeveless undershirt. I don't like to buy from morons.

"it becomes a matter of not making this the hill you die on."

There are times when that is valid, and times when it is only a mask for cowardice. Besides, the notion that this could turn into a hill that men die on rather contradicts your assertion that the battle is not worth fighting.

We really need to pick one of these hills pretty soon, tell the chronically-offended community that they're just going to have to shut up from now on, and make it stick -- even if we die on that hill.


45 posted on 02/23/2006 5:37:27 AM PST by dsc
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To: rhombus
Kids have been calling these wife-beaters for years and years. Here we go again.

Does that make it right? I cringe whenever I hear that (which is not often).

46 posted on 02/23/2006 5:38:42 AM PST by NotJustAnotherPrettyFace
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To: ShadowDancer

The preferred garment of rednecks...


47 posted on 02/23/2006 5:41:13 AM PST by dakine
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To: ShadowDancer

These people would really hate to see what is caused a wife beater in the telephone business.


48 posted on 02/23/2006 5:43:50 AM PST by em2vn
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To: em2vn

Trying to parse sentence.

Cant..quite...make..it...out....must...try..harder...cannot..understand...


49 posted on 02/23/2006 5:48:28 AM PST by Skooz (Chastity prays for me, piety sings............Modesty hides my thighs in her wings......)
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To: gridlock
That's what they're called, aren't they?

No! Try "sleeve-less T-shirts", for starters.

50 posted on 02/23/2006 5:50:52 AM PST by NotJustAnotherPrettyFace
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To: Unkosified; cyborg

I think it started on Long Island-Brooklyn in the 70s. Before that they were Guinea Tees.


51 posted on 02/23/2006 5:51:35 AM PST by wtc911 (You can't get there from here)
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To: Skooz
Of course, that was over 20 years ago when I was 6'1" and 175 pounds of lithe, sinewy, lean muscle.

You mean, back in the day when women would look at you twice? Yeah buddy!

52 posted on 02/23/2006 5:52:42 AM PST by Max in Utah (At least we had it, at one time.)
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To: Max in Utah
You mean, back in the day when women would look at you twice? Yeah buddy!

Two, three or four times. Hey, I was good lookin' back then. Really.

53 posted on 02/23/2006 5:55:41 AM PST by Skooz (Chastity prays for me, piety sings............Modesty hides my thighs in her wings......)
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To: Unkosified

I heard that it started around the time COPs came on the air and most episodes featured guys wearing sleeveless t-shirts being arrested after a domestic disturbance call.


54 posted on 02/23/2006 5:55:42 AM PST by Tribune7
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To: ShadowDancer

That's what I've called 'em ever since I heard the term. It's a perfect description of what you see on every episode of COPS on a domestic disturbance call.


55 posted on 02/23/2006 5:56:46 AM PST by Xenalyte (Can you count, suckas? I say the future is ours . . . if you can count.)
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To: Skooz

OOOPs! Caused=called.


56 posted on 02/23/2006 6:03:29 AM PST by em2vn
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To: ShadowDancer

I prefer to call em' "Ike Turners."


57 posted on 02/23/2006 6:05:20 AM PST by Oschisms
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To: Oschisms

Sweet! A 3fer sale on wife beaters! Thanks for posting!...


58 posted on 02/23/2006 6:07:25 AM PST by tman73 (GW has nuts...Dems don't)
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To: NotJustAnotherPrettyFace
Try "sleeve-less T-shirts", for starters.

It's the sleeves that make 'em "T" shirts, right?

If they're sleeve-less, shouldn't we call 'em "I-shirts" instead?

59 posted on 02/23/2006 6:11:13 AM PST by ctdonath2
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To: ShadowDancer

Round these parts we just call them 'tacky" :-)


60 posted on 02/23/2006 6:14:46 AM PST by KosmicKitty (WARNING: Hormonally crazed woman ahead!!)
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