These Shirts Are Called ‘Wife-Beaters’ Because Of A Detroit Man

Whether it's Bruce Willis crawling through air vents in Die Hard, Wolverine in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, or most famously, Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire, the sleeveless tank top is one of the most recognizable - and controversial - articles of clothing around.

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Seeing someone wear this shirt with one of the worst names, the "Wife Beater", creates a particular image of a man who is either sleazy or violent. But why does this shirt have such a stereotype, and where does the name come from? It turns out that it can be traced back to a man from Detroit.

Detroit, 1947

The term "wife-beater" to describe a basic popular shirt is pretty jarring. As a kid, you don't know the meaning behind the phrase, and as you get older, it is either desensitized or you realize how messed up that name really is.

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The connection between violent men and the "wife beater" shirt goes all the way back to 1947, when a man named James Hartford Jr. graced the cover of the New York Times in a tank top covered in blood splatters after he gruesomely beat his wife to death. He was branded as "the wife beater" in the media, and many believe the association between the two helped solidify the name.

"A Streetcar Named Desire"'s Impact

Much like how the shocking crime of beating one's wife captivated the 1940s public, seeing one of the cinema's most popular actors do the same crime and much worse in the same A-style tank top around the same time as the real-life crime is believed to have further generalized this term.

In 1951, a film adaptation of the play A Streetcar Named Desire, featuring Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowalski, showed this fictional man commit violent atrocities against his wife and sister-in-law. In the story, Stanley assaults his wife, rapes his sister-in-law, is loud, drunk, and crude; a stark contrast to most men of the time.

While the film was nominated for best picture and much of the main cast won or were nominated for best actor/actress/supporting role, it was shocking to see on screen.

The term "wife-beater" is losing its popularity these days, but the fact that a term that has existed for nearly a century may have derived from the Mitten state is pretty surprising.