Jail for Sagging Pants: Fashion Police?
We are a nation that pulls itself up by the bootstraps.
But are we also a nation that needs to pull up its pants?
A 17-year-old Florida boy was recently jailed overnight for violating a local “sagging pants” law after a police officer spotted him riding his bike with his pants slung low enough to reveal four or five inches of boxer shorts.
“Your Honor,” the boy’s public defender told the court, “We now have the fashion police.”
A Florida judge later declared the law unconstitutional, but that hasn’t deterred authorities in California, New Jersey, Illinois, Michigan, Texas and other jurisdictions from proposing or enacting similar measures, arguing that the sagging fashion is akin to indecent exposure.
The style of wearing over-sized pants that sag to reveal large expanses of underwear started in prisons, where big pants were issued with no belts. In the 1990’s, the look seeped into the popular culture—and under the skin of politicians and police.
“We’re not going to sit here and let that happen in Flint,” declared the police chief of Flint, Michigan, where wearers of saggy pants can be arrested “if the pants are at the knees and your underwear is exposed.” He calls the look “disorderly” and “immoral self-expression.”
The south Chicago suburb of Lynwood, which also bans the buns look, claims the fad has gone so far as to effect economic growth and discourage businesses from investing in Lynwood.
ACLU attorneys counter, calling the laws “idiotic” and arguing that “You can’t arrest people because of their style of dress.”
Tell us what you think: Should government be responsible for dictating what citizens can wear? Is publically exposing your underwear freedom of expression, indecent exposure, or your personal responsibility?
Comments
If we're going to jail guys for wearing their pant
Can we start jailing women for wearing shirts so low their breasts are falling out, and shorts that are so short it’s as though they’re simply wearing underwear?
Taryn | 2 months, 4 weeks ago
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Saggy Pants
As the mother of a teenage boy I dislike the sagging pants look. I am always admonishing him to pull up his pants and he is not allowed to wear them terribly low. I sometimes see people on the subway and their pants are so low they are forced to walk as if they have a load in their pants. But despite not liking the look I do not think there should be a law against it. To me that seems a violation of civil liberty. I also don’t like the pierced look or the belly showing look but that is not against the law…Where would the law end? Who would be allowed to decide what is and is not acceptable?
Saritha Clements | 2 months, 4 weeks ago
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not a leader
One thing I do know is that you are not a leader when,you go with the so called fashion statement wearing baggy pants. Hmmm, did you ever think about dressing the way you really want and be a leader, and maybe even start your own fashion trend. Don’t get me wrong, if your job requires it (baggy pants with boxers shown) then I guess you won’t be excluded as a leader.
Daniel | 2 months, 4 weeks ago
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How can they find time to police dress codes?
We can only wish they would spend as much time doing the real important job at hand – fixing what’s wrong with this country. They spend time on stupid, unnecessary areas of control like this.
peg lombardi | 2 months, 4 weeks ago
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Do they know how short that style makes them look?
My sister sold a car several years ago to a man who was buying it for his son. The son was wearing the baggy pants with his boxers showing and my sister’s comment was “Do they know how short that makes them look?”
I think we’re starting to lose sight of individual freedoms. I also think somehow a lot of parents have decided that they need to be their child’s friend rather than their parent. The decision of what children wear, at least to a certain age, should be made by their parents, and to a certain degree the schools should have some discretion. The principle of in loco parentis makes the schools the parents in the absence of the parent’s presence. But law enforcement has much more on it’s plate than policing pants on kids-at least with their pants hanging down like that you know they’re not stealing anything. If they put anything in their pockets the pants would fall off, and you know they can’t run away in those pants.
Kristi Jacobsen | 2 months, 4 weeks ago
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It is telling us more than just the saggy pants
Young people like to challenge authority, especially the authority they don’t trust or believe in. It is in their blood. Unfortunately, many of these kids don’t have strong relationships with home authority. It is a sign to show weak family relationships.
Christine Liu | 2 months, 3 weeks ago
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An excuse...
The anti-saggy pants law was used, (at least in Florida), as an excuse to arrest people who the cops didn’t like, but didn’t have reason to arrest.
This law was, consciously or unconsciously, targeted at minorities and/or other groups the government didn’t like. I believe that politicians might have thought they were justified – even if they weren’t – in the name of “decency. The cops, however, saw it as a convenient way to infringe on the civil rights of people they didn’t like and allowing ad hoc harassment.
Whether you agree with the ‘fashion’ or not, it is unconstitutional to arrest people without probable cause, which this law allowed them to do.
Doc Holliday | 2 months, 3 weeks ago
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finally!
There should be a dress code against inappropriate dress in public. They already have it in schools but it isn’t enforced half the time.
Gorgonzola | 2 months, 3 weeks ago
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Who's responsible
Who is responsible for making any decision, be it baggy clothes or anything else? The police may not be the best ones to enforce a dress code, but like in all other areas where we as parents fail to teach our children that there are consequences for all decisions that they make, they are forced to take care of the chaos that occurs.
Our children chose the clothes they wore and if their choice was in line with our guidelines, we paid for their choices until they were old enough to pay for their own. If they chose something we didn’t agree with, they could chose to buy it themselves or choose something within our guidelines. Baggy pants were not considered safe, in our home. Shame on the schools that do not enforce their dress code and any other rules they have (or shame on the parents that don’t allow them to enforce the rules. What a disservice to children when parents aren’t involved in teaching them to make choices that have consequences they can thrive on. Children, like adults, do not always make good choices. There should be no question about the fact that they are responsible for the consequences of all their choices, not someone else.
Christie Kramer | 2 months, 3 weeks ago
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Oh, for the days when they were too big for their
These kids have no more idea how silly they look than we did. Every generation’s got them: big hair, platform shoes, bell bottoms, corsets, bustles; the list goes on and on. Don’t worry, they’ll be suitably horrified at their appearance soon enough.
Baggy, I’ve never cared about, but the wearing them where the underwear is showing just looks slovenly to me and if they didn’t pull them up, I would, their friends too, still do. It’s cute; some of them still hitch up their britches when they see me coming.
As for legislating this issue, I don’t dig it – too pushy for me. I’ll tell you, you look silly, but it’s not up to me to make you change.
mrsgrim88 | 2 months, 3 weeks ago
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The Notion of this Complaint is Bizarre
There is nothing in this article to suggest that this case involves a “fashion police”. To say so is a bizarre twist on the event. The law in question addresses self exposure in public. If one twists the real issue as this writer has done, then the writer of the article should have no problem with skirts that are so short that they reveal a 13 year girl’s rear end and genitalia.
This is NOT an issue of fashion police at all. The issue is to what extent the people can accept public exposure of one’s body and defining what that means. I personally do not believe that people, on the whole, are mature enough to responsibly handle “self exposure” in public.
Dr. David Wilkes | 2 months, 3 weeks ago
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Just pull up your pants...
I never understood the appeal of people having the need to show off their underwear. I don’t want to see it. I just want to beg some of these people to pull up the belt. Heck, I’ll even buy some of them a belt. Personally, I think the parents shouldn’t let their kids leaving the house like that….or maybe force the kid to wear embarrassing underwear – or no underwear – so their kids could might just decide to pull up their pants.
Mara | 2 months, 2 weeks ago
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Really?
Dr. Wilkes-
“The law in question addresses self exposure in public.”
The law in question is not about self exposure in public, it is about a fashion that is not appreciated by a small portion of the population. If it were all about self-exposure in public, it would have proclaimed the attire in question “indecent.” No claims of indecency here. Just another case of a small part of the population yelling loud enough that pandering politicians… well, pander to them.
———————
“If one twists the real issue as this writer has done, then the writer of the article should have no problem with skirts that are so short that they reveal a 13 year girl’s rear end and genitalia.”
What you describe is ‘indecent.’ The law, specifically, (and one guesses deliberately), does not label the attire in question ‘indecent.’ It, thereby, makes the cops charged with enforcing this bogus law “fashion police.” Is your application of this law to a completely unrelated behavior an attempt to provoke a negative emotional response?
———————-
“This is NOT an issue of fashion police at all. The issue is to what extent the people can accept public exposure of one’s body and defining what that means. I personally do not believe that people, on the whole, are mature enough to responsibly handle “self exposure” in public.”
If people are not “mature enough” to decide how they dress, who is? Politicians? Politicians who have no respect for individual civil rights? You do realize, don’t you, that politicians are part of “people, on the whole”? Who decides when one is “mature enough to responsibly handle “self exposure” in public”?
——————-
From the standpoint of attire, this entire issue is a “tempest in a teapot” and “much ado about nothing” (okay, I’ll stop with the cliches). In every generation, children have wanted to rebel against the norm set by their elders. And, every generation of elders has tried to make children hew to their definition of “normal.” What is dangerous about this type of law is that it could be, and was, selectively “enforced” against people that the police don’t like. It is not okay to arrest people because we don’t like their attire, if that attire is not indecent. In this case, the police did just that – arrested people who they perceived as abnormal or a threat to them, using an individual’s attire as an excuse. For that reason it is malignant, as well an unconstitutional infringement of an individual’s civil rights. Which, makes whether the population, as a whole or individually, likes it completely immaterial.
Doc Holliday | 2 months, 2 weeks ago
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Stupid but not illegal
I know plenty of boys my age who wear there pants so low people can see their underwear. My friends and I all think that this is gross and that they should wear belts but by no means should it be considered against the law. I agree that someone’s pants showing their underwear is not at all similar to someone showing their “rear end and genitalia”. Wearing baggy pants is gross and unattractive, but it isn’t indecent exposure.
Beth | 2 months ago
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Lame
I’m an 18 year old girl and that’s so stupid it’s ridiculous. That’s like telling someone they can’t wear a hat because it isn’t right.
| 1 week, 4 days ago
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We shouldn't stop at sagging pants
As a grandmother and devout Christian, I am disappointed by the direction society has gone. People are acting immorally, singing immoral songs, and now they even dress immorally. The police are our only defense now against the rising tide of scandalous behavior.
| 1 week, 3 days ago
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saggy pants
Immorality is immorality no matter what you call it! Jail them or make them use suspenders.
| 1 week, 1 day ago
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wear what you want
This is just plain dumb. Let people wear what they want. That’s like saying that someone can’t wear their hair up because it will show the back of their shirt.
| 6 days, 16 hours ago
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???
personally I dislike the idea of sagging pants but I believe as long as their skin under the waist isn’t showing then I don’t see a problem, bikinis are acceptable and yet wearing a bra and panties is unacceptable when they show the same amount of skin, so how can boxers that look like short-shorts be illegal???
| 20 hours, 19 minutes ago
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