George Will has a beef with blue jeans.
The conservative Washington Post columnist unleashed a fusillade of pejoratives against denim in a recent piece where, with his customary grandiloquence, he slammed America’s penchant for Levi’s as poor taste and childhood silliness. “Denim is the clerical vestment for the priesthood of all believers in democracy’s catechism of leveling – thou shalt not dress better than society’s most slovenly,” Will said.
I’ve worn jeans almost every day for the last five years, so I guess Will has a beef with me. But that’s fine; Will’s entitled to his opinion on fashion – regardless of the fact that he’s a grown man who wears a bow-tie – and I’m entitled to have the most static wardrobe in the universe. In fact, if he ever ventures to Eugene, Will and I could sit down at a bar in our respective garb and have a jolly good time poking fun at each other. Because despite the fact Will thinks my jeans make me look “slovenly” and I think Will’s inclination for juvenile formal wear is absurd, we both agree that it’s our right to dress as silly or as classlessly as we please.
Unless, of course, we were to move to Riviera Beach, Fla.
A small beach community of 37,000 residents located north of West Palm Beach, Riviera Beach officials believe that some fashion statements are simply too abominable to tolerate. Last year, Riviera Beach residents voted for an ordinance that would prohibit the practice of “sagging.” According to the ordinance, it is now “unlawful for any person to appear in public or in view of the public wearing pants below the waist which expose the skin or undergarments.”
The style of sagging derives from prisons, where inmates forced to go without belts for security reasons would often let their pants sag down onto their hips. From there, it transitioned into hip-hop culture and became popular with young black men. However, “sagging” has become a widespread fashion phenomenon over the years, embraced by skateboarders, rock stars, David Beckham, drunks and, when beltless, myself.
The effort to reign in sagging in Riviera Beach was led by baptist pastor and mayor Thomas A. Masters. “Everywhere I went, there was a groundswell, a cry for something to be done for what the community was seeing as disrespect, indecent exposure,” Masters said in an October 2008 interview with Time Magazine.
Though Riviera Beach doesn’t have to combat large inner city problems such as guns and gangs, it was forced to butt heads with a much more insidious threat: roving bands of young men exposing their boxer shorts to the virgin eyes of residents. For this reason, 4,700 Riviera Beach residents signed a petition to put an initiative criminalizing sagging on the ballot in 2008. It passed with the support of a whopping 72 percent of residents, and the sagging law was born.
While other locales, such as Flint, Mich., have passed similar laws, none has enforced them with the zeal of Riviera Beach. The city keeps no official records of individuals they have prosecuted under the ordinance, but according to The New York Times, Riviera Beach has charged more than a dozen violators since July 15 of last year. These saggers face initial fines of $150 for a first-time offense, and $300 for a second.
Recently, the ACLU stated that sagging is a constitutionally protected expression, and the organization is now providing legal aid to individuals charged with sagging offenses. Last week, it even called in a chic Manhattan fashion expert to testify on the merits of sagging style.
But Mayor Masters won’t back down, and argues that cities have the right to dictate dress codes just as they have the right to dictate the height to which trees can grow. Of course, the slight flaw in this reasoning is that trees don’t have Constitutional rights and people do.
Take a jog down any American beach – regardless of the city – and you’ll likely have the misfortune of seeing an old guy in a Speedo or worse, but that’s the consequence of living in a free society. The idea that the law needs to step in and prohibit dress it finds offensive is a boneheaded and arrogant philosophy of civic governing. It also sets a dangerous precedent for further restrictions on individual expression.
So on Wednesday, when a Palm Beach Gardens court rules on the legality of sagging, do me a favor and show some solidarity with the wardrobe oppressed in Riviera Beach by getting your sag on. And if you see a guy with a pair of tattered jeans halfway down his hips, check and see if he has a crude caricature of a bow-tied dilettante on his boxers. I don’t want Mr. Will to feel left out in the struggle for the rights of the fashion-impaired.
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Saving saggers
Daily Emerald
April 19, 2009
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