I have many ‘urban’ students at my school (not only black, but they make up a majority of our population) and I can assure you that this style is still going strong among the Rascally Youth segment.
These kids wear their pants so low that when they sit down in their chairs, the waistline is nearly all the way down to their knees (they often wear very long shirts to partially cover this).
Thank god we’re going to uniforms come fall!
Student: “Hey Mr. Bravo. We going to uniforms next year?”
Me: “Sure are! It’s going to be great!”
Student: “Man, _____ that. Y’all can’t make me wear a uniform.”
Me: “You’re right. I’ll miss you when you unenroll from our program.”
Student: incoherent mumbling
They still do it in my neighborhood, too. I’m surprised girls even talk to them, let alone lay down for this style. It’s as high a dealbreaker as spitting is for me.
I saw a 20 something the other day with the serious baggy pants thing going. While he was at work. And he had to keep one hand on them to keep them from falling. But it gets better. His job was running down the street grabbing bagged up lawn debris and throwing it the back of the garbage truck while also leaping on and off the back the truck and holding on for dear life as it rushed down to the next spot. I suspect he might be just a smidgen safer and more productive if he had both hands free and wasn’t wearing pants that are in constant danger of tripping him even if they don’t fall. Good grief.
My boyfriend had a suitemate in college who had this look. Now he really was the nicest guy in the world and a total gentleman, which is why I will not put his name here. However, when he was late to class, it was very hard to not fall over laughing as you watched him hitch his pants up with one hand and half lope, half stumble off to class, all the while holding his pants up. Oh, god, I’ve never forgotten it, even almost twenty years later.
When did this become a racial thing? The linked Wiki suggests the fad started in prisons, which is BS. I was hating this fashion when it was the rage for east coast surfers in the late 1960s.
Two things we know for sure: 1) Young people like to tweak the noses of old people and 2) old people (myself included these days) can’t stand seeing young people wear their clothes “wrong.”
From the link:
“Here is my attitude,” said Obama. “I think people passing a law against people wearing sagging pants is a waste of time. We should be focused on creating jobs, improving our schools, health care, dealing with the war in Iraq, and anybody, any public official, that is worrying about sagging pants probably needs to spend some time focusing on real problems out there.”
“Having said that,” he added, “brothers should pull up their pants. You are walking by your mother, your grandmother, your underwear is showing. What’s wrong with that? Come on. There are some issues that we face, that you don’t have to pass a law, but that doesn’t mean folks can’t have some sense and some respect for other people and, you know, some people might not want to see your underwear — I’m one of them.”
There was an adult sagging in my apartment complex yesterday. My immediate reaction was ‘ugh’. He was sagging his sweatpants and his undershorts outlined his crack.
Plenty of kids have sagging dads…so I’m guessing it’ll be awhile before someone realizes how fucking retarded it looks. ESPECIALLY when a kid has to put his hand over his crotch to hold his pants up. Have you noticed the ‘sag walk’? Where someone is bouncing up and down with his legs out? Bleh.
I’ve wondering about this, too. I’m obviously not the target audience for young dudes sporting this look, but I find it very hard to believe that the young ladies love it (I mean, I suppose they do - I just find it very hard to believe, because the guys look so stupid).
Heh - the hats on sideways look always makes me laugh - I grew up in a farming community, and the old farmers always wear their hats sideways. Yes, young man, you too can look like an old farmer!
Why would you look for logic and/or sanity to explain anything about any fashion trend?
Why is being tanned still fashionable, when it has been since the 1920s, almost a century now, and we know it’s bad for you and causes premature skin aging? Why is it still fashionable for women to shave their armpits, even though almost no one can give you a good reason why they do it?
There were also logistical problems with female foot binding in China. That didn’t stop it from being fashionable, or stop that fashion from lasting for a long time.
Growing up in predominantly white/hispanic southern oregon, sagging was in fashion while I was in high school from 00-04’, and since we only had white and hispanic/latino kids, it was them doing it.
When I became a teacher for a houston suburb, I discovered the the sagging pants were strictly a black student phenomenon. However! There are a faction of black students who wear ULTRA-TIGHT pants as well. On average, I’d say black students at the school I taught wore normal jeans. That’s the danger of averages, of course.
And teachers would often discuss how odd it is that the phenomenon has survived for so long as well. We had strict rules against it, supposedly, but administrators rarely ever supported it. I sent many kids out of my classroom with sagging pants, only to have it ignored by admins.
Also, the students at my school almost universally started wearing basketball shorts underneath their pants, to get around the “no underwear” showing rule. This looked doubly ridiculous of course, but I was impressed with the ingenuity. Officially, of course, the administration said that wearing shorts underneath sagging pants was still unacceptable, even though wearing shorts by themselves were just fine. So it became obvious to everyone that it was just “the man” trying to oppress the students. I mean, the students knew it was completely illogical, “Why are we allowed to wear basketball shorts, but not sagging pants on top of them? My underwear aren’t showing!”
