I had to start the this thread title with a disclaimer: my wife related this story to me and wants the opinion of a wider group of people, 'cause neither she nor I are hip-hop fashion gurus.
Anyways, she was shopping at our local thrift store (inner city Detroit) and noticed an otherwise normal looking kid (meaning, not looking like a crazy street person), seventeenish, wearing a pair of red girls panties on the top of his head. This wasn’t one of those nylon head coverings or a knot cap. First of all, it had a white elastic waistband (err… headband); second, it had two distinctive leg holes with a seam around them; third, the crotch area (err… top of the head area, in this case) was pieced and seamed together exactly like a pair of panties.
So. Are head panties a new fasion trend that I’m too unhip to know about? Or was this young man less stable than he first appeared? Fraternity pledge maybe? Or just got dressed too early in the morning?
Although only abstractly related to the subject, I found it a sign of the times when the Wall Street Journal ran a front page article about “Dew-rags”.
Perhaps this youth read the article and was trying to take it to the next level.
Incidently, 50 cent has his penciled image on the cover for that story.
I once saw Coolio on Howard Stern’s E! show and he had a pair of briefs on his head with his braids pulled through the legholes. Stern teased him about it unmercifully. It was a pair of male briefs though, not panties. So maybe it is a hip hop thing. I guess if I had to wear underwear on my head I’d rather wear panties than briefs, though.
In the movie “Weird Science” the teen scientists wore panties on their heads in order to help their computer conjure a woman up when it was struck by lightning. Perhaps the young man cited in the OP was doing something of that sort and simply forgot to remove the panties afterward.
Ah! Good info, Diogenes. You have touched upon the crux of the matter. Putting one’s own underpants on one’s head in search of laffs has a long and honorable tradition (or, ah, so I understood), although usually occuring at 2am rather than 2pm. But someone else’s underpants? Maybe it was an indication of how much of a player he was.
My sister and I have been threatening each other for months with these things, and Christmas is just around the corner. I think it takes the idea to a new level.
In the Dec. 11, 2003 Rolling Stone, on page 43, there’s a picture of Strokes singer Julian Casablancas clad in a white belt, a garbage-collector’s shirt, and a pair of heart-decorated panties on his head. The panties had been thrown onstage, and he put them on his head and kept singing.
It’s my belief that the person in question was planning to rob the establishment and had heard that crooks often wear nylon stockings over their heads to achieve the robbery. Then finding she had neither in the clean clothes drawer at home, resorted to the next best alternative.
