Saggy Pants and Fashion Police

While waiting at a stop sign in Duluth's Lincoln Park District last summer I noticed a tall, lean black youth on a bicycle waiting to cross the road in front of me. He was wearing his underwear hiked up high and his pants sagging low. What was noteworthy though -- since wearing boxers high and pants low has been around for a while -- was that he had a pair of men's briefs over the plaid boxer shorts. 

Photo: Tom Evil. Creative Commons 2.0

What kind of fashion is that? 

Well, let's step back and look at the way a lot of us dressed when we were hippies. Not everyone was in favor of guys wearing hair to their shoulder blades or wearing ponytails. Or being barefoot, or wearing bell bottoms and love beads. 

What was really going on? To some extent, wasn't it a rejection of the idea that one set of rules should apply to all? So it was a values conflict. Or was it something else?

In 2014 NPR did a story on "Sagging Pants and the Long History of Dangerous Street Fashion." The article notes several communities that made "sagging pants" illegal. In Ocala, Florida, one of the council members got so annoyed by the look that she successfully prohibited it. You could even be fined $500 or spend six months in jail.

Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, not only banned the sagging look but got buy-in from the NAACP. Pikeville, Tennessee, opposed sagging pants as a health concern. (Did anyone enforce this by saying, "Trust the science?")

Wildwood, New Jersey also got in the act. The town mayor stated he was not trying to be "the fashion police" while simultaneously announcing that Wildwood indeed be policing this. 

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If we take a look at fashions, even in my short lifetime, there has always been some heavy-handedness use to support censorship in this area of personal expression. I seem to recall school districts that forbade wearing clothing with brand names on them. I suppose it was considered a form of shaming. Rich kids could wear expensive brand clothes and the poor kids couldn't, though where I grew up in New Jersey it was some of the poorest who wore the most expensive closes, obtained by shoplifting.

Hemlines on girls' skirts were another area of conflict. I believe it used to be one inch above the knee in most of the Sixties, until dress codes were discarded altogether. (At least that's how I remember it in New Jersey at the time.)

In recent years the shredded jeans kids wear seem strange to me, but again I'm fully cognizant that I wore clothes that some people would call strange. We were anti-materialism and anti-consumerism, so putting patches on clothes reflected this philosophy.

For any, if not most, people if it's a little frayed it goes directly to the discard pile even if it is warm enough to enable you to survive an Alberta Clipper.

Nevada Bob w/bluesman Jimmy "Duck" Holmes.
Each is attired in a clothing style that aligns with 
who they are. Photo courtesy Gary Firstenberg.

When it comes to business attire, whole books have been written on how to dress. Do they still have Power Ties? Or an updated Dress for Success?

Then there's the issue of wide ties or narrow ties. Cuffs or no cuffs on men's slacks. Remember when pleats were in? Who decided that, and who decided they were out?

I've never stayed up to date on women's fashions, though I do know they're continually shape-shifting, too. When was it that women's sweaters and blouses had shoulder pads? It was like they were football quarterbacks. About ten or fifteen years ago (maybe more) the black and white, striped blouses were in, narrow white stripes on a black field. It seemed like they were everywhere.

And then there that bare shoulder look where the fashion designer was able to charge the same price while using less material, cutting off one, or both, of the shoulders.

Back to the Future II was fun because of the fanciful way they portrayed the fashions of the future, which are now already past. I don't believe any futurist, whether in Hollywood or sci fi, could have predicted our current mask fashions though.

Meantime, life goes on. Have a nice weekend and dress warm if you're from the Northland.