History Teacher: A Bigot’s Guide To The History Of Sagging

tag: history teacher

In my inaugural article for “Liberal America” I would like to take the opportunity to introduce myself so that no one will be particularly shocked later on down the road when I seemingly careen off the tracks of sanity, past the rails of caution, and over the cliff of all reason. You see, I’m not a history teacher, but it’s my passion that tends to cause me to do that, once in a while, and I become a little blind with my determination to enlighten, to convey my point of view and ensure that like-minded people have a place at the table of human experience alongside the already present voices of differing opinions.

I am “of an age”, which means it’s still rude to ask me, because women’s worth is still judged by their age, among other things. If pressed to tell, I will not tell the truth. It’s not that I am a particularly deceitful human being. I simply think it’s none of anyone’s business, except perhaps my doctor. I have a fairly young sounding voice in person and in text so people never guess my age correctly. This always amuses me. I’m a hard core feminist, but not fringe. I was a teenager when the ERA was not passed. The arguments against its passing were almost as asinine as they are today. I remember something about public toilets being co-ed that had people freaked out. How silly. I refer to myself as a mutt. I was about 15 when I realized that I was not one specific race or another, something that my family had hidden from me and my siblings. However, that one last visit to the grandparents, and the opportunity to dig through albums of old family pictures shed a lot of light on the reasons why my 90 year old grandfather had “cafe au lait” colored skin in the middle of winter, and why he insisted on keeping his riotously curly, jet black hair tamed with loads of some sort of shiny grease. I had black, very slanted eyes, a perfectly straight nose, razor sharp and very high cheekbones, and this interesting olive cast to my otherwise pale complexion – all telltale hints that I was in part a combination of Cherokee and African American.

The Fountain
The Fountain

I didn’t quite know what to do with this information. My mother thought it was hilarious, and only mentioned it once as though it were some huge and secret joke. She told me something along the lines of my father’s family hiding the fact that there was a, and I quote her words here, “Ni__er in the woodpile.” Charming woman. History teacher. My father denied it as nonsense and would not speak of it, the look in his eyes telling me that if I asked ONE MORE question regarding the matter, one of his signature belt whippings would ensue. I just didn’t bring it up around family after that. Occasionally I told friends, but I learned that was a mistake because regardless of color, their treatment of me was immediately different. Friends who identified as white would sooner or later get around to working it into conversation that I was “not racially pure”, “a mulatto”, “mixed race”, “high yelluh”, or even “ni__er” if they were angry and felt somehow morally justified in laying that one out there. Black friends would tell me that I was still white, that white was not just skin tone but the way I had been raised, and even though I was part black genetically I would never understand, would never be a part of American black culture, and would never be “worthy” to be considered “one of us”. ?Once in a great while, ?someone would just look at me and see that I was not “pure”. I experienced this a lot in Utah, where the genetic pool is comparatively small because of the church’s early insistence on Mormons marrying only other Mormons. ?They seemed to know right away I was not white. Well, not as white as they were, anyway. This was nice in a way because it meant I was harassed less about my religious beliefs and there were fewer attempts to convert me.

The only time my race, whatever it may be, was ever accepted was when I was around American Indians. It did not seem to matter to them that I was the genetic result of many different peoples, and in fact, they seemed to welcome it. Never an unkind word was ever spoken to me about it.

Needless to say, race issues are a bone of contention for me, because I’ve seen, and experienced the stupidity of bigotry from more than one quarter.

So when I saw this meme floating around online, my head spun on my neck, a la Linda Blair.

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Here we have an example of how one form of bigotry is used to justify another kind of bigotry. This is the same mindset that people use when they say women who dress a certain way deserve to be raped, are “asking for it”, the same rationalization used when people opine that homosexuality brings its own rewards in the form of AIDS. In this case, prison = bad, homosexuality = bad, signaling availability for a sexual rendezvous = bad, prison sex = bad, therefore the urban fashion that evolved from that one signal = bad. Bad, bad, bad. Moreso, there are no memes of white guys with saggy britches sporting this nonsense, so the message is clear: black men in prison troll for dirty prison sex and this is the sign they use to communicate their sinful lusty desires.

Yes, I can hear the peals of laughter from some of you, even now. But can you picture the oh-so-delightfully-Freudian-and-barely-contained sexual arousal of others as they read this, their immediate guilt and indignation, and shame, and their then-silently-sworn vow to ensure this EVIL is removed from our midst, this almost-SATANIC signal for homosexual sex? You know there is some Phyllis Schlafly wannabe out there thinking exactly that. In fact, there are a whole bunch of them, and they are passing laws. And none of them is a history teacher.

So there’s another crusade out there against the fashions favored by the young. Let’s take a look at the hysteria in a moment, however, and figure out where urban fashion, or hip-hop fashion originated.

Several fashion houses take credit for inspiring the look of early hip-hop fashion, but the truth is simply that the emerging art form of hip-hop was populated by people finding their way up the artistic ladder from the housing projects and various ghettos across the U.S. and Britain, particularly Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, Atlanta, Philadelphia, New York City, Houston and Detroit. For instance, the stocking cap, originally used for covering hair to prevent breakage, to ease wearing of a wig, and during the creation of a quick weave became a fashion accessory.

Baggy clothing has been popular for 80 years, starting in the 1940’s for American black youth. The style was called a “zoot suit” and its origins seem to be tied to the then-Black American music scene, same as hip-hop clothing is, now. According to Wikipedia, “A young Malcolm X?described the zoot suit as: ‘a killer-diller coat with a drape shape, reet pleats and shoulders padded like a lunatic’s cell’.”?The zoot suit was seen as a luxury item because of the extra amounts of material needed for its tailoring, material the U.S. War Production Board felt was needed by the World War II effort. Life Magazine joked that the zoot suit’s extravagance was a compelling argument for lowering the draft age to 18, and in no small part fostered resentment toward the young men who wore the suits, which then included Mexicans and other non-whites. They were accused of being “unpatriotic”, and the Anti-Mexican riots ensued, known as the “Zoot Suit Riots“. The zoot suit was seen as a symbol of rebelliousness, of self-determination and a declaration of freedom. Naturally, they were banned for the duration of the war.

The modern take on baggy clothing emerged again as clothing was passed from elder brother or father to smaller child. Fit was not as big a concern as was ensuring the child had clothing of some kind to wear. Hand me downs from an older relative were also a status symbol – a sign that the wearer was man enough to wear the clothing of an older, larger built relative. The re-emergence of popularity of the zoot suit in the 1980’s thanks to a remake of “Scarface” influenced fashion choices combined with the popularity of the bad boy influences of music (groups like JoDeCi), and modern hand me downs. Notice how low the knees to their jeans sit on their legs.

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Fashion houses picked up on the trend immediately.Adidas, Nike, Reebok, FUBU, Tommy Hilfiger and even Calvin Klein all rushed to get a piece of the hip-hop money pile. Their target of course was American youth, and specifically, white American youth. Urban fashion was seen as cutting edge, rough, sexy, and cool, and who doesn’t want to be all that?

So where does the fashion of “sagging” come from? The style partly has always existed, due to ill-fitting clothing. For ?instance, “plumber’s crack” existed long before rap music.

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In France, this is called “le sourire du plombier”,?which means “the plumber’s smile.”

In the 1960’s and 1970’s, Hippies wore hip huggers which were notorious for creeping down to expose a bit of butt decolletage, so designers took to making shirttails a little longer to ensure enough material for tucking your shirt in. You may have noticed shirttails are approximately 4 to 6 inches shorter, now. Also, does anyone remember the macrame’ string bikini? In the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, women took to creating their own bathing suits out of macrame’ string, inspired by “Planet Of The Apes”.

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Macrame’ string bikinis were loosely woven triangles held together with braided bits of string, usually unlined, thong style bikinis and showed a great deal more than a pair of high riding men’s boxers ever have. They remain legal to wear in public everywhere. About 1974, bandana halter tops became the rage among high school age girls and young women and consisted of little more than two bandanas strategically tied or sewn together to ?cover as little as possible. In 1977, in an attempt to ride the money train that was the movie “Jaws”, a film called “The Deep” was released, and the movie poster outside every movie theater across the US was a picture of Jacqueline Bisset in a white, thin, wet t-shirt. “The Deep” was the ninth highest grossing film that year, beating out “Annie Hall”, “The Spy Who Loved Me”, and “The Turning Point”.

By the 1980’s, America was seeing a return to ‘family values’, and that neo-conservatism extended to fashion and music. Madonna kept us busy being most shocking in the 1980’s with her collection of bras. The Virgin Tour featured a strapless white lace bustier. The Who’s That Girl Tour featured a longer black bustier with straps and gold sequins and tassels on the cups. The Blond Ambition Tour featured a pink corset designed by the famous Jean Paul Gaultier. Madonna made bras fashion. She gave women permission to wear bras as tops. Dance floors were littered with women sporting satin and velvet corsets and bras studded with crystals.

About 1985, teenage girls took to wearing men’s boxers as shorts. Specifically co-eds made the style so popular, colleges started printing their school sports logos on boxers for the women to wear. In a pinch, wife beaters made great mini-skirts, too. The stretchy fabric was skin tight, and pulled down nicely as a short short skirt under a long top. The thin fabric gave viewers more than a hint at the color and shape of the wearer’s undergarments. Again, no one found it remarkably offensive enough to pass legislation against it.

So we’ve established the practice, or should we say, ennui, regarding droopy pants, of displaying the buttcrack, breasts, and other bits by both men and women. But specifically the practice of allowing your underwear to show above your jeans waist line, where did that start? On a fashion catwalk, naturally. According to Wikipedia, when low rise jeans rose in popularity at the same time thongs were in style, the fashion called “whale tail” became popular. Whale tail was first seen on a fashion model during a show for Gucci. A band member of All Saints was seen sporting whale tail right about the same time, and Britney Spears was a major contributor to making whale tail popular among teenage girls.

So where did “sagging” come from, the style of clapping a belt around a pair of pants perched at the top of the thighs, or lower, exposing one’s baggy boxers? American prisons is the origin of sagging, although it is not the result of boys and men trolling for homosexual sex.

To quote Wikipedia, “According to Greg Mathis, sagging was adopted from the United States prison system where belts?are sometimes prohibited?to prevent prisoners from using them as weapons or committing suicide?by hanging themselves.?The style was later popularized by hip-hop?artists in the 1990s.?It later became a symbol of freedom and cultural awareness among some youths?or a symbol of their rejection of the values of mainstream society.

Rappers soon picked up the fashion as it added to their tough guy image. Sagging can be taken one step further in some cases, wearing the bagged pants backwards such in the case of Kriss Kross. Their album cover from 1992, “Totally Krossed Out” Shows the two 13 year olds sagging backwards.

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There is no evidence linking sagging to an invitation to gay prison sex, and no history teacher saying it is, but rather is connected to U,S. prisons’ disinterest in providing clothes that fit to prisoners along with denial of access to belts “for safety reasons”. If sagging says anything about us as a nation, it is a reminder for us all of a few uncomfortable truths: that more young black males are arrested and incarcerated?(1 in 15 black males are incarcerated at some point in their lives while 1 in 106 white males are incarcerated)?for longer lengths of time?(because prosecutors are more likely to charge men of color with charges that require minimum sentences), repeatedly (the recidivism rate for black males is three times that of white males), and that we as a country take poor care of the people we incarcerate.

It is remarkable enthusiastically laws against sagging are passed, a fashion predominantly preferred by youth and men of color, and yet there are no laws against whale tail, there are no laws against women who decide to wear bras out for their morning runs, there are no laws requiring women to wear bras and in fact, New York allows women to go topless if they choose, and has allowed it for some time. The ACLU contends that laws against sagging will lead to racial profiling, giving police yet another excuse to detain and harass young men of color for no other reason than their baggy boxers are exposed. This is precisely why we should all care to see sagging laws defeated or repealed.

What is most infuriating about the rumor of how sagging started is how quickly people are willing to buy into the belief that homosexuality had anything to do with it. They ignore their history teacher. While it may fit a certain political narrative that black fashion is somehow the result of sexual deviance, the truth is that fashion choices by youth in America, particularly youth of color, are more inspired by the political statements they are making, and a declaration of a desire for freedom and a statement of defiance for cultural norms.

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tag: history teacher

Simone, a liberal feminist through and through, lives in America's Midwest amongst more corn than she ever imagined possible. Her interests are varied, ranging from politics, art, and cooking to languages, sewing, and her collection of post-WWII Japanese china and ceramics. Her favorite blogging companions are her cats, Pusszirra, Krunk the Cave Cat, and BonusKitty.