Did we wake up in another dimension?
The Dallas city council has launched a campaign against saggy pants. This debate ain’t new, but their tactics certainly are: they’ve commissioned rapper Dooney Da’ Priest to spread the distinctly homophobic message:
You walk the streets with your pants way down low/ I don’t know/ looks to me you on the down low.
…
If you stand up straight, bet your pants fall/ Might as well walk around with your pants off/
Pull ’em up, pull ’em up, pull ’em up/ Be a real man/ Stand up/ Is that your underwear, man? Pull your pants up.
Mr. Dooney also claims that saggy jeans mean you’re looking to get fucked. If you ask us, Dooney and Dallas’ politicians are fucked in the head.
nilla4me
Having not been in prison (whew, yay for beating the statistics so far), I can’t verify this statement as being true. But it is rumored that the wearing of the pants in such a fashion is indicative of being a prison bitch. In other vernacular–the “pass around party bottom”.
Rt. Rev. Dr. RES
It always surprises me…not….that the neoconservative politicians are always the ones ready and willing to establish the norm and legislate behaviours that only conform to their own beliefs.
Every adolescent generation does something in clothing or hairstyle to completely gross out their parents and grandparents. It is a right of passage, and the duty of every generation to go far beyond what their parents did.
Sometimes, I think to myself, “Desmond Morris was right when he first suggested which racial group had the most impressive private parts and glutes.
Morris also believed that much fear and loathing was because the penile dimensions was a cause of both envy and concern that their love object would prefer bigger than smaller.
I of course read the first post, which suggested that prison punking includes that kind of fashion statement. I, too no nothing about that probable fact.
I for one am a person who prefers to include my imagination in my eye candy.
Dawster
is it wrong that this doesn’t bother me?
having friends who have been in prison (or, as we called it, “visiting family in Brazil”), the “low riding” pants thing CAN be an issue AT TIMES… not in the cases where the prison has jumpsuits, etc. it’s not a norm, just a “can be in places”.
i don’t find this offensive or homophobic. i find it as “a matter of fact”. I’m just not the type of person that gets upset because straight guys don’t want to be gay. to me, that’s not offensive – they have a right to be straight, you know… and they have a right not ot what to be confused with being gay.
i don’t want to be straight. i don’t want to “experiment” with a girl, i don’t want to “have an open mind” and try it with a girl, and i certainly don’t want to attract them. so if someone told me “hey, this is what straight guys do to ask for pussy”… i’m going to stop doing it. it doesn’t mean i’m a heterophobe…
so someone saying the reverse doesn’t bother me. NOW, had he said, “wearing your pants down means your a little fag…” THAT would be different. but straight guys not wanting to be gay is suppose to be offensive?
in trying to look at things fair and evenly, i feel like the oddball here. though, i have to TOTALLY agree with A.B., that it’s a fuck way of going about it…
EdWoody
While I do hate the fashion with a passion, this does seem to be going a little too far.
Jus
I remember in middle school (which was over a decade ago) prisoners doing the assembly hall speech and commenting that saggy pants was code that you were a homosexual. Just sayin.
Anthony
After reading about the true meaning behind saggin’ pants on Global Grind I have a knew take on the fashion statement. I’m don’t like to wear my pants low myself, but I remember doing it when I was younger. If I only new….
Leland Frances
They are using the fear of being thought gay as a tactic to get others to do something they want. It does not matter whether that something is good or bad.
How many times have you heard male children told not to cry because it was a sign of weakness [read gay]. A 3-year old in Florida was accidentally beaten to death a couple of years ago in the process of his father trying to teach him to fight to toughen him up, so, as the mother testified, he wouldn’t turn out gay. It is relevant that his parents came from the same culture that this homohating campaign is directed to. BTW, after having been hospitalized before for the abuse but returned to his parents, he slipped into his final coma while his parents were at a Bible study class. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronnie_Paris
The campaign’s rap song includes the warmly motivational lyrics:
“looks to me you’re on the ‘downlow’…
On behalf of real men…
Be a real man …
showin your behind to other dudes..
degenerate …”
This is EXACTLY the kind of demonization of being gay that is at the core of Donnie McClurkin’s “ministry” and the cluelessness about how inexcusable that is appears to be shared by both Barack Obama and the wise men of Dallas.
Brandon85
It’s also a lesson in duplicity. Not too long ago (and probably still), the type of people that look like the guy pictured were the very ones promoting baggy pants as something cool. In fact, wearing tight pants was seen as an attempt by women to show off the shape of their body – something men weren’t supposed to do. Leland said it best.
“They are using the fear of being thought gay as a tactic to get others to do something they want“. Precisely.
Dawster, that’s one point. I certainly get that a straight people like to reinforce their sexuality, but what makes them think everybody needs to hear their negativity towards all things gay in a general audience? I’d have a funky good time if gays were to REALLY deride heterosexuality in the media any chance they got, just to see how shitty they’d feel and look when they got their own medicine. Of course jerks like the pictured would be ready to fight if you act just as stupid as them.
Mr. B
“I’d have a funky good time if gays were to REALLY deride heterosexuality in the media any chance they got, just to see how shitty they’d feel and look when they got their own medicine.”
I have a feeling it wouldn’t work that way, mostly because heterosexuality is the dominant paradigm and the point would be lost. Instead it would just be, “Oh, those angry gays–see? They’re so unhappy and unbalanced. And it’s because they’re GAY.”
It’s a tough balance. We don’t want to be placid doormats, buttoning ourselves up in “acceptable” imagery (fifty years ago it was suits and skirts and homophilia, now it’s “straight-acting” or harmless, flighty, fashion-tip-offering gays and middle-class, SUV-driving, not-too-butch lesbians and nuclear families with children and for marriage rights), but we don’t want to be the crazy, out-there militants no one will ever take seriously either. So in a way, we’re all a bit duplicitous, if only because trends change and some of us (like us queers) are still waiting to be counted.
Mr. B
Quite honestly, it doesn’t matter how sagging originated, because wherever it originated that message has been lost in favor of style. Fashion trends happen when there’s enough imitation that a look loses its original meaning (or identity).
I’ve heard many different reasons for the saggy pants. I’ve heard that the look originated with people who were too poor to wear anything but hand-me-downs, so they owned the too-big fit and glamorized it. I’ve heard that the pants were big to hide weapons in. I’ve heard the jailhouse bottom story, too. And hey, maybe there are some prisoners out there who use their pants as a way of “flagging bottom,” if you will, but I’m skeptical that that is or was ever extremely common because 1) so many prisons have jumpsuits, as Dawster mentioned and 2) with as important as masculinity is to the image generally associated with sagging, I find it hard to believe a bunch of macho thugs would readily embrace gay imagery like that (unless it was an act of defiance, like pigtails and so forth). And even then that’s kind of pushing it. In my opinion, which doesn’t stand for much.