Thread: Wife-beater shirt... ?

Wife-beater shirt.

Is it slang, and can it be used in adverts (paper, TV, ...?). Who might be using it? Teenagers? Is it used ironically or seriously? I don't quite understand who is likely to use it in the English-speaking communities and in what types of speech this can occur?

WOW!!! look at the opening for a book that won Amazon's Best Book of the month for Oct. 2010 and this is for ages 14-up.. it is a "young adult" book!!


REVOLUTION by Jennifer Donnelly

Those who can, do.

Those who can't, deejay.

Like Cooper van Epp. Standing in his room--the entire fifth floor of a Hicks Street brownstone--trying to beat-match John Lee Hooker with some piece of trip-hop horror. On twenty thousand dollars' worth of equipment he doesn't know how to use.

"This is the blues, man!" he crows. "It's Memphis mod." He pauses to pour himself his second scotch of the morning. "It's like then and now. Brooklyn and Beale Street all at once. It's like hanging at a house party with John Lee. Smoking Kents and drinking bourbon for breakfast. All that's missing, all we need--"

"--are hunger, disease, and a total lack of economic opportunity," I say.

Cooper pushes his porkpie back on his head and brays laughter. He's wearing a wifebeater and an old suit vest. He's seventeen, white as cream and twice as rich, trying to look like a bluesman from the Mississippi Delta. He doesn't. He looks like Norton from The Honeymooners.

How many 14 year olds are going to know about The Honeymooners or a "wifebeater"???