or Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire (but not as much of a dick)
The downfall of the shirt is the name: Wife beater? A-shirt? Something has to work and not be too technical. I don't tell people that I use dentifrice to brush my teeth, you know?
The term wife beater, according to the internet, goes back to the Middle Ages, where knights who lost their armor in battles often had nothing but the chain-mail undergarment to protect them. Those chain mail undershirts were damn strong — even a sword couldn't get through. When a knight lost their armor and continued to fight successfully, they were referred to as a waif beater (waif, referring to an abandoned or lost individual). Due to the fact that knights who had been abandoned and continued to fight with only the “shirt off their back” (albeit chain mail), they were given this noble title — an abandoned fighter, beating their way through battle.
Nowadays, this isn't a regal-seeming term, because every episode of Cops features some drunken dirt-bag covered in a bean-stained wife beater for actually beating their wife. If you're even more unlucky, they're hiding in a barbershop that's closed for the day, naked.
It seems like it has maintained popularity ironically (thankfully) among the hipster crowds. However, I do feel like you should be able to do 50 push-ups to wear one outside of the house. Just remember you look like someone who would be drinking and belching and smacking his wife on Cops. As it grows more popular, the word can be seen as making light of a really serious situation: spousal abuse. I don't think it glamorizes the act of assaulting your partner, but much like a lot of other words I've retired, this one will be added.
So I guess I'll do my weekend routines in my sleeveless tee
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