Alessandro squarzi wife beater
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Why Do We Call It A “Wife Beater” Shirt?
How did a violent term become a piece of clothing?
We’re in a bubbling cauldron of gender issues, and they’re boiling to the surface.
To contribute to this heated discussion, we think there’s no better time to take wife beater, the slang term for that ubiquitous sleeveless white shirt, to the dump for good.
But, how did the violent term become associated with a piece of clothing anyway?
For that, we take an etymological and sartorial tour through time.
Alessandrosquarzi.Violent wife beaters in the 1800s and 1900s
This literal sense connecting wife beater and “husband who beats his wife” was first recorded in 1855 (according to the Online Etymology Dictionary). And, the same sense made its first appearance in The New York Times in 1880.
No connection yet between violence against women and t-shirts, though.
However, in 1947, a brutal crime story went viral and indirectly associated a violent male wife beater with the sleeveless wh