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.
Do you consider this freedom of speech?
What about "colored?"
I thought that went out in the 60s?
I heard it used so often, it's hard to get offended. My mom calls them jersey shirts and hates them.
Kids have been calling these wife-beaters for years and years. Here we go again.
If you're asking me if he would have been perfectly within his rights to allow the ad to run like that the answer is yes. Just as the group who complained about the ad were well within their rights to do so. They voiced a complaint and he agreed and retracted. I don't see a Freedom of Speech issue here.
LOL
No kidding? I'm almost 50 and have never heard them called that.
I've heard them called that many times.
Sure, my 26 year old son has been calling them that since high school.
Thank you for an excellent response to my question. I agree with you btw.
Never heard that one. ROFL.
I used to hear them as "spaghetti shirts". I guess that's offensive now, too.
Everybody calls them wife beaters. So what?
They're not like a 'magical Dungeons & Dragons garment' that forces you to beat your wife when you put one on....
I'm 53 and know the term because that's what my kids call them. I suppose the female version are called "husband beaters".
I generally just call them beaters because its just short for wife beaters. Heck my wife and her friends call them wife beaters too, college educated thirty-something professional women.
That's what they're called, aren't they?
If they don't like that, they're really not going to like some of the other names...
I prefer to call them Guinea Tees.
Must be a generational thing. I'm 55 and my son has used the "wifebeater" term for that shirt for a number of years.
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