'Wife beater' in style, but is it insensitive?

By Booth Moore
Los Angeles Times

Rock-rap superstar Kid Rock sports the shirt with the controversial nickname.

According to Jesse Sheidlower, North American editor of the dictionary, an unusual definition of the phrase "wife beater" is now a contender for lexicographic immortality.

The phrase no longer would strictly refer to a man who beats his wife; its definition would be expanded to mean a white ribbed-cotton sleeveless undershirt that is a wardrobe basic these days for movie costumers, rap stars and models.

In the popular imagination, the shirts are associated with the Stanley Kowalskis and Tony Sopranos of the world: anti-elitist, testosterone-dripping lugs who sit in front of the tube in their underwear and slap their wives around, hence (presumably) the slangy-sounding name.

Although the style has been around for more than a century, in recent years there's been a boom. The shirts have shown up on bad boys Tommy Lee, Kid Rock and Snoop Dogg and on femme fashion plates Madonna, Britney Spears and Gwyneth Paltrow. Calvin Klein makes them. Even Chanel and Dolce & Gabbana have offered versions of the scoop-neck tops.

The desire to look trashy isn't hard to explain (they're sexy on the right body and showcase well-toned biceps). What's mysterious is how such a potentially offensive phrase managed to slip into the fashion lexicon so easily.

Mark-Evan Blackman, chairman of the menswear design department at New York's Fashion Institute of Technology, remembers hearing "wife beater" used when he was growing up in Brooklyn in the 1970s. It referred to the shirts worn by "pumped-up Italian guys in pizzerias," Blackman said. "The stoves were 150 degrees, these guys were lifting weights and they had a virile appeal."

"It's a reference to class," said Valerie Steele, curator of the museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, who started hearing the term "wife beater" a few years ago. "The subtext is that Stanley Kowalski and other working-class men are more sexy and physical, which may be why everyone wears them at the gym."

The undershirts are often referred to in music and film. Rapper Eve sings about how good she looks in her "wife beater with a bangin' tan." And in the final scene of "8 Mile," Eminem mocks rival rapper Papa Doc for wearing one of the shirts, calling him "Snoop Dogg in a bra."

"Everyone wears them, especially hip-hop artists," said Susan Bauer, director of fashion programming at MTV. "But I was told by an executive not to use the word in the workplace," she said. "So we just take off the 'wife' and call them 'beaters.' "

The term may have resurfaced as part of an urban aesthetic that has swept popular culture in the past 15 years, Blackman said. "At one time, people aspired to be wealthy and to get out of the city. But now people feel to be cool you have to be down with it. I have wealthy students who say such and such is 'ghetto' or 'pimp,' and I've heard 'wife beater' at Princeton and Brown.

"For the people using these terms, they're not socioeconomic, they're descriptive. Because regardless of whether you are black or white, live in the city or the suburbs, everyone today grows up listening to rap."

Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women, says that calling a shirt a "wife beater" trivializes domestic violence.

"The implication is that wife beating is not viewed as sufficiently serious to lift it above the level of something that's OK to joke about."

But the OED's Sheidlower, who says "wife beater" probably will turn up soon in the dictionary's online edition (www.oed.com), says any fuss over the phrase is media-made. "Apart from fashion writers writing about this, there's no evidence that this term is being used in an offensive way. People who use this word are not using it to put anyone down."