
Sagging Pants and the Long History of 'Dangerous' Street Fashion - user_235711
http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2014/09/11/347143588/sagging-pants-and-the-long-history-of-dangerous-street-fashion
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sp332
I heard it originated in prison, but differently. Wardens would give out ill-
fitting clothes to humiliate the inmates. So people on the outside made saggy
clothes "cool", that way the badly-dressed people on the inside would feel
normal. It was just solidarity with ill-treated prisoners.

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ChuckMcM
When I was a kid bullies pulled your pants down to your knees to embarass you,
I guess now they pull them up :-)

But more seriously kids get to an age where they want to declare they are not
their parents, the go to method of choice has been clothes since well since
forever. The cycle is that the kids wear it, its shocking, then as they get
older they are wearing it as "adults" which then makes it establishment, so
the kids behind them make up some other fad. Rinse and repeat. I think making
dress code laws is both absurd and hopeless.

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cafard
A corollary: everyone detests looking like his father, nobody minds looking
like his grandfather. My brother and I would not under any coercion worn
shorts with dark socks and dress shoes, as our father routinely did in warm
weather. Some kids don't mind that now. Think also of the "Teddy Boys" of the
1950s, wearing the clothing of the Edwardian period ca. 1910.

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jqm
I don't really care what people wear, but a zoot suit or an afro isn't the
same as exposing most of your underwear in public.

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tthomas48
This is pretty much the longest ongoing trolling effort in existence.

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CamperBob2
Well, that's sartorially normative, isn't it? Check your privilege.

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cafard
Do I get a receipt?

More nearly seriously, am I supposed to check my privilege the way I might
check my fly, or check it the way I might check my raincoat or my baggage?

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tthomas48
The way you check Google, before you look like an ass on Hacker News.

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acconrad
I always thought wearing baggy clothes meant it was easier to conceal weapons.

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Zigurd
Check for symptoms of moral panic.

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ianstallings
_" [For the wearers,] it's a mechanism to reclaim dignity that's been taken
away from them," he said._

Uh, you're doing it wrong!

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qu4z-2
You may only reclaim your dignity in one of the following pre-approved
fashions?

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ianstallings
Do you really think wearing your pants down over your ass is going to reclaim
your dignity? If so I got news for you - it's going to do the opposite. If
that's a surprise to you then I'm surprised myself. If you object to it then
yell at the sky, because it's just as likely to change things. Welcome to the
real world, where these things matter.

