Pants Hang Low

Since the advent of the zoot suit in the 1930s, teenagers have bucked traditional dress codes.

Fads have come and gone, parents have made fusses and schools have passed rules to ban certain styles, but one fashion trend — one that started in prison where inmates aren’t given belts — could carry a stiff fine and jail time in certain cities across the nation.

It’s the sagging of pants, and it’s dropped to all-new lows with some male teens, who cinch their pants around their thighs, leaving their buttocks exposed.

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BAKER — The City Council on Tuesday voted 4-1 in favor of a sagging pants ordinance.

Council members A.J. Walls, Jimmy Pourciau, Fred O. Russell and Carlon “Frank” Simpson voted for the measure while Charles Vincent cast a no vote, saying the ordinance possibly infringed on First Amendment rights and specifically targeted youths.

The new law passed by the council makes it unlawful for any person to appear in public wearing pants below the waist that exposes skin or undergarments.

Any person convicted for violating the law can face fines ranging from $100 to $250 and one to four days of picking up trash or performing community service, depending on the number of offenses.

Vincent, a history professor at Southern University, said that after talking to many of his students, he believed baggy pants was mainly a trend or fad that will eventually go away.

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JAMARCUS MARSHALL, a 17-year-old high school sophomore in Mansfield, La., believes that no one should be able to tell him how low to wear his jeans. “It’s up to the person who’s wearing the pants,” he said.

Mr. Marshall’s sagging pants, a style popularized in the early 1990s by hip-hop artists, are becoming a criminal offense in a growing number of communities, including his own.

Starting in Louisiana, an intensifying push by lawmakers has determined pants worn low enough to expose underwear poses a threat to the public, and they have enacted indecency ordinances to stop it.

Since June 11, sagging pants have been against the law in Delcambre, La., a town of 2,231 that is 80 miles southwest of Baton Rouge. The style carries a fine of as much as $500 or up to a six-month sentence. “We used to wear long hair, but I don’t think our trends were ever as bad as sagging,” said Mayor Carol Broussard.

An ordinance in Mansfield, a town of 5,496 near Shreveport, subjects offenders to a fine (as much as $150 plus court costs) or jail time (up to 15 days). Police Chief Don English said the law, which takes effect Sept. 15, will set a good civic image.

Behind the indecency laws may be the real issue — the hip-hop style itself, which critics say is worn as a badge of delinquency, with its distinctive walk conveying thuggish swagger and a disrespect for authority. Also at work is the larger issue of freedom of expression and the questions raised when fashion moves from being merely objectionable to illegal.

Sagging began in prison, where oversized uniforms were issued without belts to prevent suicide and their use as weapons. The style spread through rappers and music videos, from the ghetto to the suburbs and around the world.

Efforts to outlaw sagging in Virginia and statewide in Louisiana in 2004, failed, usually when opponents invoked a right to self-expression. But the latest legislative efforts have taken a different tack, drawing on indecency laws, and their success is inspiring lawmakers in other states.

In the West Ward of Trenton, Councilwoman Annette Lartigue is drafting an ordinance to fine or enforce community service in response to what she sees as the problem of exposing private parts in public.

“It’s a fad like hot pants; however, I think it crosses the line when a person shows their backside,” Ms. Lartigue said. “You can’t legislate how people dress, but you can legislate when people begin to become indecent by exposing their body parts.”

The American Civil Liberties Union has been steadfast in its opposition to dress restrictions. Debbie Seagraves, the executive director of the A.C.L.U. of Georgia said, “I don’t see any way that something constitutional could be crafted when the intention is to single out and label one style of dress that originated with the black youth culture, as an unacceptable form of expression.”

School districts have become more aggressive in enforcing dress bans, as the courts have given them greater latitude. Restrictions have been devised for jeans, miniskirts, long hair, piercing, logos with drug references and gang-affiliated clothing including colors, hats and jewelry.

Dress codes are showing up in unexpected places. The National Basketball Association now stipulates that no sports apparel, sunglasses, headgear, exposed chains or medallions may be worn at league-sponsored events. After experiencing a brawl that spilled into the stands and generated publicity headaches, the league sought to enforce a business-casual dress code, saying that hip-hop clothing projected an image that alienated middle-class audiences.

According to Andrew Bolton, the curator at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, fashions tend to be decried when they “challenge the conservative morality of a society.”

Not since the zoot suit has a style been greeted with such strong disapproval. The exaggerated boxy long coat and tight-cuffed pants, started in the 1930s, was the emblematic style of a subculture of young urban minorities. It was viewed as unpatriotic and flouted a fabric conservation order during World War II. The clothing was at the center of what were called Zoot Suit Riots in Los Angeles, racially motivated beatings of Hispanic youths by sailors. The youths were stripped of their garments, which were burned in the street.

Following a pattern of past fashion bans, the sagging prohibitions are seen by some as racially motivated because the wearers are young, predominantly African-American men.

Yet, this legislation has been proposed largely by African-American officials. It may speak to a generation gap. Michael Eric Dyson, a professor of sociology at Georgetown University and the author of “Know What I Mean?: Reflections on Hip Hop,” said, “They’ve bought the myth that sagging pants represents an offensive lifestyle which leads to destructive behavior.”

Last week, Atlanta Councilman C. T. Martin sponsored an amendment to the city’s indecency laws to ban sagging, which he called an epidemic. “We are trying to craft a remedy,” said Mr. Martin, who sees the problem as “a prison mentality.”

But Larry Harris, Jr., 28, a musician from Miami, who stood in oversize gear outside a hip-hop show in Times Square, denied that prison style was his inspiration. “I think what you have here is people who don’t understand the language of hip-hop,” he said.

A dress code ordinance proposed in Stratford, Conn., by Councilman Alvin O’Neal was rejected at a Town Council meeting last Monday, drawing criticism that the law was unconstitutional and unjustly encouraged racial profiling. Many residents agreed that the town had more pressing issues.

Benjamin Chavis, the former executive director of the N.A.A.C.P., said, “I think to criminalize how a person wears their clothing is more offensive than what the remedy is trying to do.”

Dr. Chavis, who is often pictured in an impeccable suit and tie among the baggy outfits of the hip-hop elite, is a chairman of the Hip Hop Summit Action Network, a coalition he founded with the music mogul Russell Simmons. He said that the coalition will challenge the ordinances in court.

“The focus should be on cleaning up the social conditions that the sagging pants comes out of,” he said. “That they wear their pants the way they do is a statement of the reality that they’re struggling with on a day-to-day basis.”  – NIKO KOPPEL

Deputy Mayor Pro Tem Dwaine Caraway wants urban youths to improve their image by hiking up their pants. But a local hip-hop artist is using homophobia as a tool to get that message across.

What started as an effort by Mr. Caraway to discourage saggin’ – the wearing of jeans or trousers drastically below the waistline to expose underwear – has raised concerns because of a rap song that equates the fashion practice to being open to gay sex.

“Pull Your Pants Up” by Dooney da’ Priest (real name: Dwayne Brown) first describes saggin’ visually, but then uses street slang to imply homosexuality: “You walk the street with your pants way down low/I dunno; looks to me you on the down low.” The phrase “on the down low” can mean a secretive homosexual encounter.

The song originally contained a more direct reference in its chorus – “I think it’s rude” used to be “I think it’s gay” – that has since been changed at the request of Mr. Caraway, who stands behind the song’s current version.

“The thing that stood out when I heard the song was the lyric that said ‘gay,’ and changing that is what I suggested. And he did that,” Mr. Caraway said. “I didn’t try to analyze and change his entire song.”

The damage has already been done for some.

“I never considered saggin’ something that’s indicative of homosexual behavior,” said Cordey Lash, a Dallas-based board member of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. “For him to specifically target that aspect of what it could mean, well, it’s highly offensive and unnecessary to me.

“There are a lot of homophobic people in the African-American community that would not want to be perceived as gay,” said Mr. Lash, who is black. “But he’s adding to the intolerance and the homophobic nature in the community by using it in that way.” Those sentiments were echoed on message boards as the debate spread beyond Dallas.

Mr. Brown says his song was not meant as an attack on the gay community. “I do apologize if they feel offended,” he says. Still, he stands by the effectiveness of his tactics. The rapper argues that in his community, the shame inherent in tying saggin’ to homosexuality is more effective than any law would be.

“In Dallas, in some of the schools, some of the kids are starting to pull their pants up because of the song,” he said. “Peer pressure has a better effect than any law. I was just trying to make it uncool.”

The rap is featured prominently on both of Mr. Brown’s MySpace pages.

Mr. Caraway added that he has received feedback that a billboard and the song are having a positive effect even outside of Dallas. “It is working across the country; we have dealt with it from New York to California to Florida to Georgia,” he said.

Mr. Brown’s lyrical tactic isn’t the first time that homophobia has emerged as a theme in hip-hop music – Eminem, Ice Cube, Common, 50 Cent, DMX and other rappers have been vilified for anti-gay lyrics.

Mr. Brown claims that saggin’, which is a fad partially born from prison inmates having to wear ill-fitting clothing without belts and drawstrings, has grown to suggest something different in prison culture: an invitation for sex.

“They know that it came from behind bars, but they don’t know its history,” Mr. Brown says of the potential audience for his song. “I don’t think the kids are walking the streets without belts because they’re about to hang themselves, you know.”

Mr. Brown wrote “Pull Your Pants Up” in early October in support of Mr. Caraway’s cause, which initially took the form of a proposed city ordinance last month. Constitutional issues with such a law, which has been enacted in Shreveport, La., and considered in Atlanta, Cleveland and elsewhere, prompted Mr. Caraway to change his strategy. So he used Mr. Brown’s song as a cornerstone of an independent billboard campaign that he helped launch throughout downtown and southern Dallas last month.

The lyrics to “Pull Your Pants Up,” which implores saggin’ adherents to “be a real man; pull your pants up,” were altered at Mr. Caraway’s insistence to accompany the campaign. He called Mr. Brown a kid who got carried away in a song.

“I suggested to him that it was something he needed to change, and he did,” said Mr. Caraway, who included Mr. Brown on one of the billboards behind the slogan “It’s rude, not cool … walking around showin’ your behind to other dudes.”

Mayor Tom Leppert, who supported the “Pull Your Pants Up!” campaign, said the city has never endorsed the song.

“When there were some objectionable comments, [Mr. Caraway] asked that they be removed,” said Mr. Leppert, who has reached out to homosexuals since taking office by marching in the annual Dallas gay pride parade and meeting with the city’s Log Cabin Republicans.

Adding to the controversy is Mr. Brown’s public persona. A self-described “gospel rap” artist and ordained minister, he’s active with the Shepherd’s Staff, the volunteer ministry of Bishop T.D. Jakes’ Potter’s House church in southwest Dallas.

“For a gospel rapper to resort to such a homophobic statement is a way for certain conservative and religious organizations to go about discouraging that particular lifestyle,” said hip-hop culture expert Dr. Todd Boyd, professor of Critical Studies at the University of Southern California.

“But it’s a leap to suggest that that’s the entire stance of the African-American community. It’s similar to when people talk about sexism and misogyny in hip-hop; to say that all of hip-hop is informed with these things is a bit misguided. Yes, it’s there. But it doesn’t permeate all of it.”  – MIKE DANIEL