It’s a sleeveless T-shirt, not a ‘wife-beater’

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Perhaps I am callous and unfeeling and reprehensible, but I have a hard time getting upset about the term “wife-beater” when it refers to sleeveless undershirts. Some people have a much easier time. It’s an issue right now in Boston, where a flier advertising a sale on “wife-beaters” has provoked some outrage. (In case you’re unclear on what a wife-beater looks like, Wikipedia may jog your memory: “Countless drunk and disorderly domestic-abuse suspects who were arrested on the TV show Cops wear such shirts.”)

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