wifebeaters Re: Closets and Wardrobes

[Carol]

> Magpie:
> Yes, I know the kind of shirt it is--I got confused thinking it was a 
> translation or something, so I was thinking we were talking about a 
> real man's sleeveless undershirt worn by a man. As opposed to like 
> what I was wearing layered under a shirt yesterday.
> 
> It does have ethnic connotations--I mean, this is the shirt Stanley 
> Kowalski wears while he's yelling and beating his wife etc. It used 
> to have an even more offensive ethnic name, I believe. I think there 
> was a time some people called it a "guinea tee."
> 
> But it this is supposed to be a contemporary romance novel about 
> modern young people that's probably the word that would be used. One 
> could use "black tank top" if they didn't like it, but if the author 
> chose wife-beater she probably chose the trendier term on purpose.

Carol responds:

She's a first-time author with no idea of how readers will react,
which is why I'm testing for reactions here. I'm not going to change
the word, only query it, and it would help if I could suggest
alternate terms. So far, "tank top" is the only possibility. And I
still think that the color ought to be changed because "black
wifebeater" glimpsed out of context suggests something very different
from an article of clothing.

Carol, who thinks that the author chose "wifebeater" because she's
about twenty-two and hasn't considered the connotations of the word