This week's column: The fashion police
I'm pleased to report that, even as temperatures rise, my summer school students at N.C. A&T still come to class appropriately covered.
There are no "do" rags or sleeveless undershirts.
No dare-to-show-what-shouldn't-be-shown low-rise jeans.
And no colorful pajama bottoms blissfully worn as outer wear (which I have seen in the dead of winter).
More significantly, the guys in the class (all two of them) wear pants that fit — that is, trousers that don't sag so dramatically that the hems snag under the soles of their shoes.
The look isn't complete, of course, without exposed boxer shorts, preferably with tasteful checks or stripes for maximum effect. Thug chic.
I thought that the baggy-pant thing had long ago run its course, but apparently not.
Somehow the appeal of pants several sizes too big keeps hanging on, even if their saggy waistbands don't.
This is especially irritating, given the origin of the trend. Prison inmates typically are required to wear beltless, droopy jeans as a security precaution.
Apparently somebody thought it looked good.
Street gangs adopted the look; hip-hop artists followed suit; skateboarders in the suburbs latched on; The Gap saw a market and here we are.
You even can buy pants that are especially designed to be worn what seems like below the knee.
But there's hope. That venerable chronicler of what's hip, The Wall Street Journal, reported last week that the cops are having a field day catching fleeing young miscreants because more and more bad boys are tripping over their own baggy pants.
Baggy pants are taking a bite out of crime.
The Journal notes the case of 24-year-old Noah Donell Brown of Hendersonville, who tried to leap over a counter in an attempted armed robbery of a Subway restaurant.
He tripped and fell.
Brown then scrambled to his feet and fled into a nearby neighborhood.
No problem.
The police found him hanging by his pants on a picket fence. They cut him loose with a knife.
"He didn't make a good jump," Hendersonville Police Chief Donnie Parks told the Journal. "The only reason we caught him was because his pants fell down.
"He was wearing underwear, thank goodness."
Now Brown is serving time in Gaston Correctional Center, where presumably all the guys wear baggy pants.
In another case, a thief dashed off on his bike after stealing three movies from a Blockbuster Video store in Ferndale, Mich.
When a patrol car knocked over his bike, he fled again, before stumbling and falling twice over his droopy pants.
Fed up, the man dispensed with the trousers altogether, as well as his shoes, before police subdued him with Taser darts.
Still another man in Lynnwood, Wash., shed his baggy jeans after escaping police custody. He didn't get far in his skivvies and handcuffs.
This isn't to say that droopy pants connote criminal behavior. No matter how silly they can look, it's wrong to stereotype young people because of what they wear rather than who they are.
But maybe the exploits of these Keystone Kriminals can dramatize the questionable choice of guys who are locked up role models.
Not many of them got there by being smart.
To be fair, I grew up in one of the ugliest fashion eras known to man: the 1970s. We wore stuff you wouldn't believe, much of it in polyester.
But, so far as I can tell, the worst criminal lifestyle we probably emulated was disco.
So I applaud Dudley High School for instituting next year a strict dress policy that outlaws saggy pants, among other things. Ninety percent of Dudley parents voted in support of the dress code.
And I am reminded of sage advice from my daddy about the foolishness of being too big for one's britches. Or, as it turns out, the other way around.
Comments (5)
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What do u teach at A&T?
Posted on June 25, 2006 9:48 AM
Ben,I teach basic newswriting and editorial writing. This summer, it's a newswriting class.
Posted on June 26, 2006 8:45 AM
Just for future citations, it's a "dew" rag.
Posted on June 26, 2006 5:47 PM
You sure? American Heritage Dictionary says this:
"do rag -- A scarf or kerchief worn as a head covering, often tied at the nape of the neck."
[DO3 + RAG1.]
Posted on June 27, 2006 9:20 AM
I've seen at least one brand calling it a "Du' Rag", too.
I envy you the respectfully-dressed students, Allen. I must confess the students at our college are rather casual.
Posted on July 19, 2006 11:32 AM