Sagging Pants: Trend or Trouble?

Although sagging pants is not a new trend, lawmakers around the country are proposing and passing laws to try to crack down on it.

When you think about some of the major issues going on these days, there are so many issues:  the economy, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,  political corruption. But apparently there  is another thing so many lawmakers and people in positions of power seem to be focused on. Saggy pants.  It's not a new trend but a whole lot of new laws are being proposed and even passed to try to change the trend.In Florida, State Senator Gary Siplin was at an Orlando school just the other day passing out 200 belts to high school boys so they could keep their pants up.Also last week, Billie Joe Armstrong, the frontman of the band Green Day, was kicked off a flight for sagging his pants too low. In most urban neighborhoods across America, it’s quite common to see young people’s underwear. That’s because the trend of sagging pants and jeans, thought to have started in jail, has not gone away.“I wear my pants like this cuz it’s basically like swag,” said Washington DC Resident Kaila Ganiey.  “You see it on TV, you know,” she said.But in June, University of New Mexico football player Deshon Marman was kicked off US Airways flight for his appearance. Doctor Malik Zulu Shabaz, chairman of the New Black Panthers, said it was no accident.“I believe he’s a victim of discrimination and his civil rights were violated because others similarly situated that fly airplanes and may be dressed in quote unquote inappropriate dress or unusual dress were not targeted as he was,” he said. Another DC Resident, who goes by “Taz” said he wishes people would pass less attention to sagging pants:“It’s our clothes. It’s not like we are naked.  And you shouldn’t even be looking at our but when we are walking.” Across the United States, lawmakers are proposing and passing laws to try to get these young people to pull their pants up.In Fort Worth, Texas, you can’t sag and ride the city bus.  In Opaocka, Florida, refusing to tighten your trousers will cost you $250. In Colinsville, Illinois, wearing saggy pants on any public property is banned. And in New York, State Senator Eric Adams used his own money to put up billboards that said “Stop the Sag.” So why all the strict laws? Malik Zulu Shabaz said it is a “failure to regulate customs and traditions and culture in our community will result in others using laws and rules to enforce how we should dress”Even Barack Obama, had something to say about it during his campaign for president in 2008: “I think passing a law about people wearing sagging pants is a waste of time,” he told MTV. "Having said that, brothers should pull up their pants." Obama might have won the highest seat in the land but getting these boys to pull up the seats of their pants may prove far more difficult.