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Store Flier Describes T-Shirts As 'Wife-Beaters'
Company Apologizes, Plans Retraction

POSTED: 6:58 am PST February 22, 2006
UPDATED: 8:24 am PST February 22, 2006

BOSTON -- Building 19, a Massachusetts-based discount store known for its quirky sales circulars, described a package of sleeveless T-shirts as "wife-beaters" in a recent sales flier.

WCVB-TV reported Tuesday that even store officials admitted that the flier went too far. It upset advocates for domestic violence victims.

"I can't say what I thought. I know what I thought, but I can't say out loud what I thought," Jane Doe Inc. spokeswoman Mary Lauby said.

The flier advertised a three-pack of men's undershirts as "wife-beaters."

"That does, you know, go to numbing and dumbing down and normalizing and suggesting that battering is a normal behavior," Lauby said.

Building 19 spokesman Jerry Ellis took the criticism seriously.

"They were right. It was awful and I am sorry it happened," Ellis said.

E-mails came into the discount store's Hingham headquarters where everyone was apologetic.

"It's a slang expression, a street expression, but we should have known better not to use it. I am supposed to read every word. Sometimes it's busy or I am lazy. We are working on a retraction," Ellis said.