Generally, when I see guys in sagging pants, they are just going about their business - walking down the street, standing in line at the gas station, and so on. Even in groups, they don’t seem to be any louder than any other group of young men trying to attract female attention, be they frat boys or skate punks. But that is just my experience. Maybe, since their fashion doesn’t bother me, they don’t stand out the way they do to you.
As for fashions that I, personally, find ugly, I could make a list as long as my arm. Sagging pants don’t even make it - they’re just oversized clothes worn in layers. Many of the current 80s-inspired looks come across as a mishmash of bad colors and patterns, for instance. But I still don’t want to shoot those kids in the ass.
Yeah, I think this is right on. OTOH… I was arrested over parking tickets and they took my belt, shoelaces, and shirt (the outer shirt, not the under shirt). By that time I was at least dealing with the one cop in that shit town who didn’t treat parking tickets like a felony, so when he laughingly told me to plan on freezing my ass of for the night (too late to post bail), I asked him if someone really thought I was going to use an expensive shirt, dress shoelaces, and a think belt to hangmyself over parking tickets…
Fortunately, I was still wearing the suitpants, for which I need no belt. Actually, the pants seem a better piece of clothing for a suicide attempt, now that I think of it. Or stuffing my boxers in the filthy cell toilet and drowning myself with them tied around my nose/mouth. The bigger the pants for hanging, the better.
The real kicker was - they lost my shoelaces and belt, so I had to walk around with no shoelaces, which is another urban jail-image thing. Thank god my pants fit without a belt, at least.
That may be true in what is your (probably fairly limited) experience with the phenomenon.
But if you spend any time in a majority-black American city, like Baltimore or Memphis (where the OP’s story takes place), you’ll see thousands of young men walking around like this, many of who are doing exactly the same sort of thing that regular teenagers do - hanging out at the mall, going to the movies, riding the bus, etc., etc.
If you aren’t actually engaging these people, I don’t know how you can make a judgment on what their personality is.
What I find is that, of the people I know, the ones that wear their pants like that tend to have an overly inflated view of themselves, and, more importantly, talk about it in an assholish manner. I have the same thing in other punkish clothes. It’s essentially built in to the fashion. There seems to be an angry dislike of the establishment built in.
The thing is, I love other counter-culture styles. And I know that part of the reason is to stand out. But. when I talk to these people, they tend to be self-effacing, if not horribly insecure. There does not seem to be a pattern of overly angry people who think being anti-establishment means they can be a douche. I don’t get the vibe that they are trying to impress anyone.
And, don’t get me wrong, I do have friends that have the punk look and/or attitude. But it’s something I have to overlook. And I’m still open to the idea that in places where the saggy thing is not as rare as it is here, they are worn by people that do not have the characteristics I’ve identified. They could be more like the people who wear holey clothes.
(And, yes, I do my absolute best not to judge any individuals that have the characteristics I describe. But I don’t see anything wrong with analyzing those I’ve already met.)
True. And it seems to me that this is precisely the point that filling_pages was making. He didn’t make any judgment regarding their personalities. He made a fairly straightforward observation regarding their behavior in public.
He never said they were nice people. He never said they had compelling personalities. All he said was that, when he sees people dressed like this in public, they cause him no trouble and appear to be no more or less annoying or threatening than anyone else.
I don’t know about you, but i tend to adopt the position that, if people aren’t giving me any hassle, then i have no problem with them. I may not find their fashion especially appealing (and, personally, i think that wearing your pants down below your ass makes you look ridiculous), but that doesn’t mean they’re bad people, and unless i have information to the contrary, i’m not going to assume they’re assholes just because of what they’re wearing.
No racial connotation here, the phenomenon is evenly distributed across races. However, even in a nightmare Benetton ad (or police lineup) of multiracial saggers, you can bet that if the pants’ waistline rests below the butt-cheeks, their speech will be peppered with crude approximations of a narrow subset of american black speech. You know, 'cuz they’re gangsta and shit.
I think it’s lame for the same reason I don’t care for kerb feelers on the wrong side of a car. Any cool it could possibly be is negated by the person’s inability to walk and carry anything in both hands.
I find the whole thing rather pathetic, aping prison inmates attire, but that’s all they got for role models? Maybe they’re practicing. On the other hand, it’s hilarious when you see one stumbling over his pant legs, or the pants actually fall down as they strut on the street.
I completely agree with these assessments. In my obviously anecdotal experience as an operator of a pair of carwashes in fairly urban areas and my experiences with John Q Public on a regular basis for the last five years, I can reasonably conclude that the majority of ass-saggers are proper douchebags, by and large. There are probably exceptions I’m sure but more often than not, these are the cats rolling into my business in a 1998 Crown Vic with gigantic 22" rims and a sound system…and while the car is otherwise a piece of shit due to third-handedness, they implore me (in an ebonically-challenged language I can sometimes just barely comprehend) to make sure I “spray their rims real good”…because of course these morons own cars where the wheels are worth more than the car.
I hate these guys. They are to a man idiotic, willfully ignorant and invariably bad people for the most part. Fuck them.
I disagree the low pants wearers are jerks. And it’s more than a fashion statement to them. For the last six months, I’ve worked with very low income people on the “fringes” of society, most from the ghetto and about 40 is the line. Those over 40 don’t wear their pants sagging, those under do.
And it’s funny 'cause at the factory I worked at the low pants wearers (LPW I’ll call them) would wear EXTRA long shirts, soley for the reason that they could wear their pants low and get away with it. The factory wouldn’t allow it. but if the shirt was oversized and fell almost to the knee who’d know.
I’ve talked about it with the people and they feel very strongly about it. It’s a strong self identificaton of their coming form the lower income of society.
Of course there are lots of others that wear it as a fashion statement. I walk around at DePaul campus in Lincoln Park in Chicago and see trendy white college kids wearing them.
Actually, it’s not. The practice was originally known as jailin’ and it refers to the way your pants sag while you’re in jail because they take your belt away. Apparently some gangbangers started wearing their pants that way because it bolstered their “street cred” to show they had actually been in jail. Then everybody started doing it and it has simply become a way to show that one is stupid.
I think it looks stupid but it’s sometimes good for a laugh. Like that guy who murdered a couple people then tried to kill one more but his pants fell down while chasing her and he tripped and fell out the window to his death.
Yeah, but at least the kids who do this are wearing underwear – all you really see are their boxers.
I used to roll my eyes at people who did this. Then I noticed my neighbor’s son mowing their lawn. They have a riding mower and his ass crack was hanging out for all to see – I’m surprised he didn’t get arrested for indecent exposure. It was the plumber’s ass to end all plumber’s ass.
After that, I’m kind of thankful to these kids – they at least know not to show their cracks.
I keep thinking it’s just a matter of time until long under-the-tshirt suspenders become necessary, if only for practical reasons. That way, your pants can sag as low as you need them to, but they ain’t coming off.
Actually, I’d guess that such a thing already exists. Anybody know?
As for the fashion itself, meh. Who could possibly care? It’s a fashion. Fashions are silly anyway.
I figure these guys are the least likely to mug me. Because they can’t run away.
And what about the guys with the pants below the ass, with a belt? I’ve seen that, too.
Then there was that one guy, who emptied his bladder in the corner of the train car, then tried to panhandle his way from that end to the other end, stopping and asking each passenger, “Mmmpthloww fvrthlaaw arowotholowaa the hmmfllupp?”