Back in the 1970s there was an off-beat theory going around that the high-heeled platform shoes for men that were all the rage back then were actually a police plot. The shoes made runaway bad guys easier to catch.
Against that backdrop, I was amused to see a recent upsurge in crackdowns by cities, towns and school districts this summer against baggy pants.
Local lawmakers across the nation have their shorts all knotted up over young folks who wear their baggy pants low enough to reveal more than most of us want to see.
Why, I wonder, do lawmakers and educators want to penalize young people for wearing a fashion that makes it harder for them to run from the police?
That’s precisely what Atlanta Councilman C.T. Martin proposes with an ordinance to make it illegal to wear baggy pants that show one’s undershorts, The Associated Press reported.
Several Louisiana towns, including Shreveport, Alexandria and Delcambre, have passed similar laws. Delcambre’s “anti-sag ordinance” calls for a $500 fine and up to six months in jail for wearing pants low enough expose, as Mayor Carol Broussard was quoted as explaining, “some of your privates” or “the crack of your behind.” Plumbers and refrigerator installers, take note.
Similar bans on baggy pants have been passed in some California school districts. Trenton, N.J., considered a ban, the Trenton Times reports, but Stratford, Conn., decided a dress-code ordinance was possibly unconstitutional.
I have other reasons to offer. For starters, it’s ridiculous.
Police have more important crimes to chase, whether the culprit is wearing baggy pants or not. Baggy pants are only an annoying symbol of a larger social headache: the crime and other cultural rot that ultimately degrades society and makes life miserable for everyone.
With that in mind, it is important to note that not all kids who wear baggy pants are trying to be criminals. Many just want to represent their youthful, in-your-face version of cool. It is ironic that lawmakers want to lock up the baggy brigades, for jail and juvenile detention facilities are major incubators of serious social problems, of which baggy pants are only a symbol.
Many a hardened criminal began as an at-risk kid who was thrown into a “juvy” detention facility for a minor offense.
That’s another irony, since baggy pants originated as a style of convenience and necessity in prison. Long before they made it to the street, “baggies” were a badge of honorable dishonor in the criminal underclass, high fashion drawn from the lowest of low places. If they look to my parental eyes like a minstrel show, so much the better in the eyes of young folks who want to look bold and audacious on the cheap.
But since fashion doesn’t stand still for long, baggy-pants ordinances offer too little too late. Saggy baggies already are beginning to fade from the fashion scene, according to youth fashion mavens, such as my teenage son, an inveterate coolness-hunter. The rise of thoughtful and less “gangsta-style” rappers such as Kanye West, Common and Talib Kweli may have something to do with that. Or maybe young folks are just getting tired of having to walk around with one hand always holding their pants up.
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For those who stick with the prison-yard fashion, the last laugh may be against the criminals. Recent news reports reveal police and bounty hunters around the country are delighted at the way baggy pants have slowed down criminal suspects.
As one private investigator in Texas told The Beaumont Enterprise, “It’s funny how the pants drop around their ankles and they start rolling.”
Who knows? At this rate, the next big police-chase reality TV show could be called “Pants.”
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Clarence Page is a member of the Tribune’s editorial board. E-mail: [email protected]