For Christ's Sake, Pull Up Your Pants!
From zoot suits, to greaser jackets, to bell bottoms and beyond, teens have always dressed in ways that adults have found offensive. You might even say that the more offense the fashion causes, the more likely they are to wear it. Inevitably though, those very teens will grow up, become parents and somehow believe that their kid's outspoken outerwear crosses a line they never dared approach. I suppose in some ways that's how "the whole durned human comedy perpetuates itself."
But in spite of this oft-repeated folly, one preacher in Jacksonville, Florida is so steamed about baggy pants and low-hanging waistlines that she has launched a campaign to crucify the look. According to Pastor Diane Robinson, "every time she sees a young man wearing sagging pants, she is personally offended." So, to counter the fashion offense, she started a belt collection for young men called "Pull Up Your Pants! Need Help? Here's a Belt." Her goal is to collect 200 belts and distribute them June 4 at "A Safe Day, A Safe Way, a community program to discourage violence." (Let's hope she doesn't cause a jump in whippings.)
One of Robinson's supporters, Levale Ellis, explained that the campaign is "not trying to demean anybody," but rather to inform them "it doesn't look good." But the motivation may be more than just aesthetics. As Ellis went on to say, "[w]e're trying to get these guys to pull up their pants and act like young men. You don't have to curse. The rap music [and] killing everybody and selling drugs, that's not life." Other organizers admit that the belts are "mostly symbolic" (especially since you need one to wear pants that low) of "something much deeper and more serious."
But this anti-sagging campaign isn't limited to Florida's clergy. State Sen. Gary Siplin is also tired of seeing youngsters walking around town with their underwear showing, which he feels hinders hygiene. The Orlando area Democrat is "sponsoring legislation that would ban the popular fashion statement at public schools." Students caught "exposing their underwear by wearing their pants or shorts below the waist" would face suspension (no word whether commandos would be exempt).
While the intentions of these campaigns are most likely admirable, a link between the breadth of a teenager's trousers and juvenile delinquency is at best unfounded and at worst prejudicial. If not, how do you explain the street gangs of the 1950s whose constrictive jeans were brought to life in "West Side Story?" Moreover, would a murderer in ministerial robes be any less of murderer?
The reality, of course, is that criminals can rock any style they want. It's not what they wear that makes them criminals, but the fact that they commit crimes. The reason teens want to wear sagging pants has a lot less to do with crime than it does with the fashion industry promoting the look as criminal, a marketing technique fueled in no small part by the contrarian cache of campaigns like "Pull Up Your Pants!" You don't need to be an advertising genius to know adolescents will be attracted to things that their parents tell them to avoid. It's been going on for generations.
Perhaps the best and most innovative thing Robinson and Ellis could do to help America's youth would be to preach, instead, against hard work, eating healthy and studying. If they fight hard enough, maybe those could become fashionable someday.
By Emil Steiner | April 9, 2007
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