 They famously cancelled side partings, skinny jeans and the cry laughing emoji – but now, Gen Z are making some changes everyone is happy to get on board with. White tank tops are having a moment, thanks in part to the likes of The Chef's Jeremy Allen White looking pretty damn great in one. But if you've been looking for style inspo on TikTok you'll have noticed a subtle, but pretty great change. No more are these white vests being dubbed 'wife beaters', but instead they've been lovingly rebranded as 'wife pleasers.' And it's not hard to see why. Obviously, the term 'wife beater' is triggering and insulting to those who have have experienced domestic abuse in any way. It's also misogynistic and an odd, casual, way to reference such serious violence. It's not the first time that the phrase has been called into question. Back in 2018, Moises Velasquez-Manoff wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times asking: 'Are we really still calling this shirt a 'Wife-Beater'?' The author pointed out the most popular theories for how this term might have sprung up. The first was that it was inspired by Marlon Brando's white vest wearing character in A Street Car Named Desire. In it, he's aggressive, rapes his sister-in-law and hits his wife. The second theory is that it came from a Detroit murder case in 1947. Crime scene photos of the man who beat his wife to death allegedly showed him wearing a white vest. Velasquez-Manoff added that the top, historically seen as a working-class garment, perpetuated harmful stereotypes that working-class men are more likely to commit violence. It's not exactly a surprise then to think that the fashion forward youth of today don't want to be wearing something with these kinds of implications on their backs. 'If you cannot understand why people don't wanna casually throw around the term 'wife-beater', I can't help you dude,' said TikToker Jace Martinez in a video. The hashtag 'wife){kind=link}
NEWS… BUT NOT AS YOU KNOW IT
They famously cancelled side partings, skinny jeans and the cry laughing emoji – but now, Gen Z are making some changes everyone is happy to get on board with.
White tank tops are having a moment, thanks in part to the likes of The Chef’s Jeremy Allen White looking pretty damn great in one.
But if you’ve been looking for style inspo on TikTok you’ll have noticed a subtle, but pretty great change.
No more are these white vests being dubbed ‘wife beaters’, but instead they’ve been lovingly rebranded as ‘wife pleasers.’