This Internet meme is offensive on more than one level.
First, the young men it shows are white, when "sagging" is a predominately black fashion statement. I feel as if the creator of the meme has done this in a flimsy attempt to disguise its blatant racism.
Secondly, I found the meme shared on the Facebook page of Heterosexual Pride, which leads me to believe that they are making fun of two groups at once: blacks and gays.
Thirdly, the meme invites us all to share the image if we want "a better dressed and more educated world" even as they are circulating information that is false and demeaning.
I have now spent a few hours reading several articles about the origins of sagging, written by a variety of people, each with an individual motivation for researching. Many of them agree that the trend originated in prisons, where uniform pants may be too big and belts removed for safety reasons, but some are skeptical even of that.
Consider this excerpt from a particularly comprehensive article which appeared last year in AlterNet magazine:
Ivory Toldson, associate professor at Howard University School of Education, senior research analyst for the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation and the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Negro Education, disagrees with Judge Mathis’ analysis and questions the widely believed origins of the sagging trend. “I have a little skepticism about whether or not it originated in prison,” says Toldson. “I’ve worked in prisons and, at least in the ones where I’ve worked, there were prison uniforms with elastic waistbands. It would be a violation to wear pants that low, so I can never say definitely that it comes from prison culture. As a researcher, I’ve also never seen any ethnographic studies. It seems like it hits home for adults, not kids, who don't like that kind of look.”
So where did it originate, if not in prison?
“I’m 39 years old and boys sagged when I was in high school,” Toldson says. “Drug dealers were the most popular people at my public school in the ‘80s and your attire easily made you a ‘mark.’ We all know that ‘nerds’ are known for wearing their pants high, even above the waist, so the counter of that would be to wear pants as low as you can.”
Toldson went on to say that there are varying degrees of the sag look, which he himself is accustomed to wearing. “As a college professor now, my sag will not be that far below my waist,” Toldson says. “I know college kids who sag a little further down than me. Then you have the fringes who wear it almost to the ground. These are the young men with the ‘give a f*ck attitude.’ They don't care about us anyway, because they don't think we care. They have issues with their families, in their communities and it's the middle finger to us all.”
In 2007, the New York Times reported on the fashion trend and the opposition to it, so this conversation is long ongoing. The article points out that fashions ". . .tend to be decried when they “challenge the conservative morality of a society.” And goes on to remind us of a similar example from our history:
Not since the zoot suit has a style been greeted with such strong disapproval. The exaggerated boxy long coat and tight-cuffed pants, started in the 1930s, was the emblematic style of a subculture of young urban minorities. It was viewed as unpatriotic and flouted 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.
No credible source that I found suggested that sagging has anything to do with inviting anal sex.
Clearly the style is controversial, even within the black community.
The AlterNet article concludes with this paragraph:
And although the sagging trend has definitely been co-opted on a superficial level by a mirror hip-hop white culture, just as wealthy U.S. corporations reap major profits from foreign sweatshop workers living in inhumane conditions, the negative connotations that stem from the trend are still outsourced to black communities. Regardless of pop status, if sagging began in prisons when belts were prohibited to minimize violence and inmates hanging themselves, due to disparities in prison sentences, it will always be inextricably tied to black culture. And through its revered place in hip-hop, it has become, for many, the symbol of a generation hanging itself.
Whenever someone dresses to capture attention, a message is being sent. When we look at these young men sagging, what do we see? Why would someone voluntarily hobble himself?
At Heterosexual Pride there were some comments posted in response to this meme, more than one of which commented on how ridiculous this young men look when they try to run or to go up a flight of stairs. And that's true...
But I see plenty of women -- young and old, of all races, creeds and colors -- voluntarily subjecting themselves to the miseries of wearing high heels, which has much the same effect of limiting a person's ability to walk quickly, never mind run. And might not wearing high heels be seen as offering an invitation --- if sex is the lens through which one views the world in general and fashion in particular?
One last excerpt from the AlterNet article:
What we mostly see, is that “give a f*ck attitude,” with young black boys wearing their pants well below the waist as some misguided symbol of strength and power -- despite the constant need to pull them up. Sagging has become a complex iconography for a generation struggling to regain its footing in a society designed for them to fail.
So it seems sagging will only fade away when the culture which fostered it fades away -- when black youth feels less disenfranchised.
Judging by the quality of the propaganda and rhetoric on display at Heterosexual Pride, that day seems far, far away.
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