Sagging pants: (Too) much ado about nothing
Apparently clothes do make the thug. At least that’s the premise behind proposed ordinances in two Louisiana cities and two Georgia counties to punish wearers of saggy pants with fines up to $500 and six months in jail. Fortunately no one’s been charged yet in the four Louisiana towns that already have such laws on the books. Perhaps cops are too busy, you know, rounding up actual criminals. Can you imagine having to tell your cellmate, who just so happens to be awaiting trial on murder charges, that you got popped for a fashion offense: “You killed a man! That’s deep. They got me for droopy drawers. Mind if I get the bottom bunk?”
Am I the only one confused by the lawmakers’ logic? They say: Sagging pants allow for the easy concealment of weapons, are safety hazards and contribute to indecent exposure. I say: And? You could hide a small cache of firearms in a hijab, so should we banish all hijab-wearing Muslim-Americans to Guantanamo? Of course not. Five-inch high heels are probably the least safe, most dangerous piece of apparel known to man/womankind; just watch a drunk girl trying to walk in them (like a newborn deer testing its legs) or see them used as a weapon (gruesome.) So should women in stripper heals be forced to do hard time? No way. As for the indecent exposure issue, I think we’re conflating decency with bad taste. Most states’ indecent exposure laws focus on purposefully displaying one genitals in public. Take me to jail if I frontally flash passing motorists, but not because you can see the tag on my boxers. (I prefer Fruit of the Loom, by the way.)
History tells us that banning certain items of clothing in order to get to the root of some societal problem doesn’t always work. (The anti-sagging-pants brigade seems to be targeting hip-hop in general and thuggery in particular.) Seven years after lawmakers in Swaziland outlawed mini-skirts in an attempt to prevent student-teachers sexual relations and reduce sexually transmitted diseases, the African nation still has one of the world’s highest HIV infection rates. My guess is they’d have done better educating citizens, distributing condoms, promoting abstinence (no, the two aren’t contradictory) and hauling predatory teachers to jail.
I’ve read that the baggy-pants style started in prison among inmates who were given ill-fitting uniforms and that no way should we allowi kids to emulate the garb of thieves, druggies, dope dealers, gang members and killers. I don’t buy it. Once oversized clothing style spilled into pop culture and got swallowed whole by hip-hop, its back-story lost its power. Hip-hop fashion is a billion-dollar industry and the preferred outerwear of tens of millions people who don’t commit crimes.
Somewhere along the line, baggy clothes became part of the reason for urban woes. I’ve read numerous crime briefs in which the “suspect wore baggy clothes.” I’ve yet to come across descriptions of suspects wearing nut-hugging pants (popular among skaters), name brand items (the haute couture crowd), bright colors (hippie-dips), all black (Goth kids), trucker hats and bleached jeans (beachcombers) or T-shirts with crosses and dragons with blood on their teeth (heavy metal fans.) Point is, we shouldn’t target acceptable clothing just because people wearing it display offensive behavior. That’d mean no more Dr. Martens boots, favored by skinheads. And goodbye to the Hells Angels’ prized leather bomber jackets. And sayonara to all the sportswear worn by gangs. Think George Steinbrenner even knows that paraphernalia from his beloved New York Yankees is treasured by the Nutty Blocc Compton Crips? Nah.
Alas, if sagging pants must be banned, then we should also consider prohibiting other forms of outerwear, such as: open-toe sandals (for people whose toes look link pieces of week-old Jimmy Dean sausage); tank tops (for folks with more chest, back and neck hair than the Geico cavemen); ill-fitting jeans (I don’t want to see the top of a woman’s thong peeking from her ass crack); baby bikinis (our daughters will have plenty of time to grow into their womanhood, so let them get out of toddler-hood first.)
Damon Hodge joined Las Vegas Weekly, in 2001. His specialties include hard-news stories, music reviews, pop culture commentary and occasional forays into social advocacy journalism. Hodge has won numerous awards from the Nevada Press Association. Email him at [email protected]