Pants Hang Low

MeShorn Daniels and Peter Hayes want kids in Louisville — and the rest of the country — to pull up their pants.

Arguing that the sagging-pants fashion trend promotes an unhealthful lifestyle of gangs, crime and violence, they’ve launched the Pull Up Your Pants education campaign, designed to persuade young people to abandon the look — especially pants often worn so low that their underwear, or more, is exposed.

They already have the support of one Louisville Metro Council member, who plans to introduce a resolution in support of their campaign next month.

While the sagging-pants look has been popularized in the rap culture, Councilwoman Judy Green, D-1st District, said the trend has a history in slavery, when masters wouldn’t allow males to wear belts as a way to degrade them.

She said it’s also common in prison populations because prisoners are not allowed to wear belts, which can be used as weapons.

“It’s degrading. In some ways it’s indecent,” Green said. “It dates all the way back to slavery, but our children don’t know the history.”

And today “that type of dress is associated with gangsters and criminal activity,” said Daniels, an assistant block-watch captain for his 40th Street neighborhood in western Louisville. Continue reading the article at Courier-Journal.com…