There is something to be said about generational trauma attached to the idea of infant male innocence that is eventually transformed into displays of a perceived masculine identity:  white cotton vests a.k.a ‘wife beaters’ have become the latest subject of my enquiry into black male identities. Through this submission I propose and illustrate this thought process through a digital storyboard, using ‘the wife beater’ as a metaphor for the first of many complicated layers contributing towards the representation of black male bodies on the African continent and its diaspora. This first layer is represented here as a form of domestic violence perhaps, unchecked for decades and illustrated: by Donald, a troubled young boy in Sydney Meyer’s documentary, ‘The Quiet One’ (1948) or Philemon in Can Themba’s playwright, ‘The Suit’ (1968).