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. With The functional case for super-baggy pant: “ease of wear”
Posted Under: Appearances
The big news on the front page of the local paper here yesterday was that Savannah is the latest city/town to ponder a ban on “below-the-rear” baggy pants. This absurdity aside, what’s interesting about the story is the section in which young baggy-pants-wearers defend their style.
Or rather, they say style isn’t really the issue at all. Because it turns out that their argument turns on function — low-riding baggy pants are all about “ease of wear.”
“I feel like a Pee-wee Herman when I have my pants up,” [Michael] Hodges said. “I need to feel comfortable.”
When the situation calls for it, [Calvin] Middleton said, he and his friends know when to change their look.
“When we go to church or have a job interview or go to school, we want to look presentable,” he said. “But we don’t want to walk around looking like a teacher all day.”
Middleton also disputed that the low-drawer look originated from prisoners, whose pants droop because they are not issued belts.
He said it began because so many young men were given their older brothers’ hand-me-down pants, which were usually too big. The fit was so comfortable, young men preferred wearing oversized pants, he said.
Adam Pinell, 17, has worn the below-the-waist look before, too. “It’s more comfortable,” he said.
I have a feeling Jonah Berger at Wharton, who studies this sort of thing, and who I interviewed for a 10/28/07 Consumed on counterfunctional watches, would zero in on that comment from the guy who doesn’t want to “walk around looking like a teacher.” That’s a style/identity motive — not a functional one. Counterfunctionality can make for a useful identity marker precisely because (in this case) it’s not likely that teachers are going to poach this young man’s style by wearing ill-fitting pants.
On the other hand … low & baggy pants have been around quite a while now, and perhaps it’s possible that their fit (or lack of fit) feels like the norm to a young guy who’s worn them that way since he was 12.
Dunno how uncomfortable you find the practice of wearing pants, or whether you wear pants at all, really. But: You buying the argument of these low-pants-wearers that it’s all about comfort?
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Reader Comments
Oh yeah, I’m thirty-two, and I sometimes think I should pull up my pants like an adult, but it’s so much more comfortable to leave them riding on my hips then to have belly flab cantilever over my belt buckle. I’m not *that* overweight; it just feels more comfortable. I do suspect however that the obesity epidemic has a lot to do with the endurance of this style; if the whippersnappers were in shape they’d be wearing skinny black jeans like hipsters.
There’s an interesting quote from a 2006 Dallas Morning News article on local efforts to ban saggy pants that speaks directly to what this post is about (http://www.khou.com/topstories/stories/khou060830_ac_saggypants.4d67fcd2.html):
“William Scheick, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin with expertise in American literature and culture, said there’s probably more at stake in this saggy-pants debate.
‘Attacks on fashion in clothing are finally not about the clothes themselves, but about what people interpret these clothes to mean,’ he said. ‘What these fashions mean to the people who wear them may have no bearing whatsoever on what these clothes mean to those who do not like them.’ “
You know what else is comfortable? Walking around with no pants at all. Just hangin’ out there, flapping in the breeze. But the MAN won’t let me do it.
This all reminds me of the Simpsons episode where everyone follows Bart’s lead: Do what you feel like.
Joseph P, do you live in Austin? Because if you do, you should celebrate No Pants Day!
Not to mention the absurdity of this article as the top headline in the Sunday paper :)
I’m not sure I needed to know about No Pants Day.
Justin: You know it’s not so absurd for that story to lead in the Slowvannah Boring-Snooze!