Jewellery (jewelry)

This style trend began in prison, but should it be a crime?

Jamarcus Marshall, a 17-year-old in Mansfield, La., thinks 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 says.

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 pose 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,” says Mayor Carol Broussard.

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

Behind the indecency laws might be the real issue — hip-hop style, which critics say is worn as a badge of delinquency, with its distinctive walk conveying thuggish swagger and disrespect for authority. Also at work is the 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.

The American Civil Liberties Union has been steadfast in its opposition to dress restrictions. Debbie Seagraves, executive director of the ACLU of Georgia, says, “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.

Racially motivated?

Not since the zoot suit has a style been greeted with such strong disapproval. Zoot suits, exaggerated boxy long coats and tight-cuffed pants, were popular in the 1930s and were an emblematic of a subculture of young urban minorities. They were viewed as unpatriotic, flouting 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, says, “They’ve bought the myth that sagging pants represents an offensive lifestyle which leads to destructive behavior.”

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

But Larry Harris, Jr., 28, a musician from Miami, wearing oversize gear outside a hip-hop show in New York’s Times Square, denies that prison style was his inspiration.

He says, “I think what you have here is people who don’t understand the language of hip-hop.”