According to this article appearing on CNN.com, a New York State Senator is using $2000 in campaign dollars to put up billboards urging kids not to wear their pants exposing their underwear.
He goes on to state that while he has no interest in creating a law to ban the practice, as he cannot and have it be legal, he wants schools to reinforce the message the policy via dress codes.
But not everyone nationwide agrees, especially this Minnesota student:
Minnesota high school student Casey Peterson, 17, said, “I think schools should let kids wear what they want. They should have a right to express themselves.”
I don’t really understand the kid’s argument. Schools do not have to provide freedom of anything, especially expression as it relates to clothing, and honestly how does exposing your boxers express anything other than the fact that you’re an ass?
What do you think about this campaign? Will the billboards make a difference? We’ve already covered school’s enforcing dress codes but should students be permitted to “express themselves” however they see fit–including wearing their pants down around their knees? Whatever you have to say about the campaign or kids being permitted to express themselves go ahead and comment on as I’d love to hear your thoughts!
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March 30th, 2010 at 8:04 am
The kid’s not saying that the schools have to provide freedom for anything, just that they should.
As for a form of expression. They’re expressing their want enjoyment of annoying the hell out of people. Seems like they’re successful.
March 30th, 2010 at 8:20 am
If kids want to dress like douches and have me snap photos of them looking all douchey then so be it. It’s all about freedom to express myself when I openly mock these asshats.
March 30th, 2010 at 9:20 am
From what I remember about dressing in high school, for the most it wasn’t so much about expressing YOURSELF as either trying to express what “group” you belonged to or how much money your parents had (the more North Face fleeces and Birkenstocks you had, the cooler you were).
March 30th, 2010 at 10:18 am
I have no problem with a school policy against sagging pants. I imagine it’s against the rules to walk around in your boxers with no pants, so why is it okay to walk around in your boxers with pants at your knees?
But regardless, the billboard won’t do a thing. These kids know they won’t get anywhere professionally looking like they do, so that message isn’t news. They don’t want to go anywhere professionally, so why putting up a billboard telling kids they can’t get where they don’t want to go would change anything is beyond me.
March 30th, 2010 at 10:24 am
Looking at these douchey (nice, Sornie!) kids is distracting and disturbing. Like I tell my younger, douchey cousins, “the last time I changed your pants was the last time I wanted to look at your ass, pull up your pants and quit acting like a jackass.”
March 30th, 2010 at 10:42 am
Most kids wear basketball shorts over the boxers to create a loophole in the “you can’t expose your underwear” dress code rule. Didn’t we all look ridiculous to the adults in our lives when we were young… at some point they are going to realize it is way more comfortable to wear your pants with the crotch where it should be and quit… and of course there will be some new annoying thing to complain about. Most of us grow up eventually… like the kids in our program say “What chu lookin’ at my a$$ for anyway?”
March 30th, 2010 at 12:30 pm
Good luck in finding a job if you go in to an interview dressed like this. Also, how can they run from the cops if they are tripping on their pants? Hopefully the majority of these kids wise up soon after HS.
March 30th, 2010 at 1:05 pm
Certainly there is room for more research, but at least a couple things I have read point to the pants around knees thing going back to prison camps in russia in World War II. The idea was that if you have to use one hand to hold up your pants you are not going to be able to run off in the cold very well and you wont be able to attack anyone very efficiently either. Certainly the Russians may not have been the first to think of this, but it dates back at least that far. Govt issue prison pants that are to big, with no belts.
March 30th, 2010 at 1:21 pm
So not a big deal. I wore tie dye every single day to school with jeans. It does not mean I wear it everyday (or ever) in my adult life.
And it comes down to being pretty much racist. Baggie pants originated in and are predominant in African American Hip Hop culture. No one is attacking the silly ass Crocks, that are also unprofessional and look stupid, that mostly only white people wear. No one is attacking the crazy looking and often very revealing goth clothes that, again, mostly only white kids wear.
March 30th, 2010 at 1:28 pm
Actually, Kassie, revealing clothing worn predominantly by white people has been thoroughly attacked on this site in the past. Feeling that underwear shouldn’t be shown off in public has nothing to do with race, so let’s just leave that out of this.
March 30th, 2010 at 1:30 pm
I can not imagine the Billboards will have any impact whatsoever on how teens choose to dress. I think they only way to get young boys to stop dressing that way is for every female they meet to comment on how stupid they look. If women didn’t find it a attractive, teen age and older boys/men wouldn’t dress that way.
Between the boys trying to show off their underwear, and the girls trying to show off their ass crack, I’m not sure wtf is going on. My guess is that there was a fork in the fashion road at some point where both guys and girls had a choice. Pants down low and show your drawers, or pants down just a titch, and show your crack. Darwin’s theory would say the women are the more evolved, since their choice didn’t mark them as the slowest of the pack (just the easiest to pick up?) like the boys choice. Those fools can’t run for crap when their pants start falling down.
March 30th, 2010 at 1:37 pm
I was on a walk recently and got to observe an escaped beagle getting the best of a high school aged boy who was trying to run after and capture the dog whilst keeping his trousers up. He was white. I hate crocs.
March 30th, 2010 at 4:45 pm
Kassie, this has nothing to do with race, as I see boys/young men of all colors dressed this way.
Also, as noted above, this may have been popularized by hip hop, but it was only hip hop artists imitating or popularizing past jail fashions. While they may have been taking this from jail house fashion in highly populated fed prisons around our country, as noted above, the “fashion” predates that by several decades, and I have a feeling several centuries.
For the record, I could care less how people dress, but I think there is a real issue in that many kids dont realize that at some point they have to put on some clothes that might require a belt to actually go out and get a job. Thats a life skill which ties back to advice given by a Rosemount police officer as cited in another thread, and might also run alongside the Section 8/Welfare thread. Oh, and its worth pointing out that its much easier to hide a weapon or shoplift when wearing baggy clothes.
March 30th, 2010 at 7:31 pm
Sure, it looks dumb — but so have many other fashion trends through time. And controversial fashion has been around since, well, pretty much forever. Mothers told their daughters in the 1920′s that they wouldn’t get anywhere in life if they bobbed their hair, and if you told someone in the 1950′s that jeans would someday be acceptable work attire in an office, they’d never have believed you.
There’s nothing new under the sun. In ten years, we’ll be worried about some other way young people wear their clothes, and most of the kids wearing their pants like this now will dress just like the average person in 2020 will, whatever that may be.
March 31st, 2010 at 7:42 am
So easy to fix.. one word- UNIFORMS. Make um wear uni’s to school. Alot of these kids are going to be wearing orange jump suits as adults, lets jest start the practice now.
April 2nd, 2010 at 8:35 am
Kassie, as a teacher in a very mixed school, I have to disagree with you. The majority of males I see sagging pants are in fact, white. With sweat pants.
The one group at my school that I rarely see sagging their pants is the Native American group. Just a couple.
April 6th, 2010 at 9:59 am
Oh my god. The problem with the sagging pants is that a lot of people DON’T stop doing it when they’re adults. I know some of these people – and they are all unemployed (and white, incidentally). I think that the saggy pants are socially accepted enough at this point that there isn’t a hard line drawn in people’s minds that it still looks disrespectful and stupid. But the fact remains that nobody is going to hire someone who is essentially showing them their ass. Goth and some of the other counter-cultures are still freaky enough that people seem to grow out of them by necessity; in other words, if you want to work anywhere besides food service, you need to take it down several notches – belt notches, as it were! = )~
I don’t really care what KIDS wear. Kids are kids, and are trying to figure out who they are. It’s not hurting them. But I do think that it’s worthwhile to instill in them (no matter what counter-culture they’re subscribing to), that if they want to succeed as an adult, they’re going to have to leave their counter-culture at home.
May 17th, 2010 at 12:41 am
I think you should let people wear there clothes the way they want to. it doesnt matter the way you wear your clothing.people should have the right to wear there whatever they when they what ever happened to this country being free i thought this country was supposed to be free but people like you just make it not seem like it is.
May 17th, 2010 at 12:29 pm
Really…………………………….?
May 17th, 2010 at 1:18 pm
People should be free to look silly if they like. They should be free to dislike people looking silly as well. People are obviously free to ignore basic rules of grammar and sentence structure…
I hear people talking about expressing themselves. What exactly are they trying to express? What is the idea behind clothing that does not fit? I find it hard to believe someone walking around like a penguin with their pants around their knees and their underwear hanging out actually stopped in front of a mirror in the morning and said, “Oh yeah! I’m looking good!”
May 17th, 2010 at 1:22 pm
In this particular instance, and I’m referring to the post above where I re-quote a Minnesota HS student, there are no rights of self-expression by way of dress in schools and thus it’s a moot point.
I’m not here to argue whether or not that’s correct but according the highest court in this country, a school can limit expressions of freedom for a variety of reasons.
So Joshua, I have to say that while I agree that people should be able to wear whatever, whenever (as long as it doesn’t create a physical public disturbance–like say if you were wearing fake dynamite strapped to your chest), that’s not how it works in school, sorry.
May 17th, 2010 at 6:58 pm
if you’re in a high school, you go by their rules. you work for any company, you go by their rules. you’re in the military, you go by their rules. you go to the mall, park, any place that doesn’t have any dress code, you’re on your own.
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