More baggy-pants news

I've pretty much had it with the baggy pants/underwear look. It's a pathetic example of how presumed coolness trumps common sense. One Dallas school board member, however, wants to make sporting these threads against a city ordinance, and he's gone to the city council to make his argument. (Article has lovely accompanying photo, in case you've been living on Neptune and aren't aware of this fashion trend)

Dallas official wants city ban on baggy pants

DALLAS -- A Dallas man has had it with baggy pants that overexpose, so he wants the City Council to look into a ban on wearing the oversized trousers that often slip so low as to show underwear.

Ron Price, a Dallas school board member, has asked the City Council to look at strengthening the law to give citations to those who expose their underwear.

"I think it's disrespectful, it's dishonorable and it's disgusting," said Price, who made the recommendation last week to the City Council. "I have no problem with the top of your Hanes label being shown. My problem is when grown men walk about the city with pants below their buttocks."

Amen, brother.

But experts say that such a law might not hold up, so to speak.

It would be too vague, said Robert Jarvis, constitutional law professor at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. He said that for a criminal law to be constitutional, a person of average intelligence must know what's being prohibited.

Oh, well, then, that pretty much eliminates its chances. None of the people who wear these clothes can honestly claim average intelligence, now, can they?

Price said the underwear issue came up after he took some elderly women to dinner and a group of men walked by with their pants so low their underwear was on display.

"I just feel that it's so disrespectful to our senior citizens, especially to women...," he said.

He said that in the Dallas school district, most schools require students to wear uniforms and students also must wear belts and tuck in their shirts.

"In the city it's a different deal," he said. "I'm asking the city to do something about it. If the city decides law enforcement, so be it."

Okay, that settles it. Dallas schools have uniforms? I'm applying there next year. The pay would be 30-50% better, and I wouldn't have to look at boys' boxer shorts.

School districts have a fairly wide discretion to set dress codes, said Naomi Gittins, staff attorney at the National School Boards Association.

For school districts, a dress code rule must be somehow related to the education mission. For instance, a district could show that in their area baggy pants are associated with gang membership and ban such apparel, she said.

That's what they say here at North Ruralville, but there are still any number of kids who seem to think this is how they should dress.

Baggy, drooping pants got their fashion start with hip hop music, and then mainstream designers started producing them, said Mary Ruppert, assistant professor of fashion at Stephens College in Columbia, Mo.

A recent trip to a North Dallas mall showed lots of super baggy pants, but they were paired with long T-shirts so no underwear was evident.

Trip Dalrymple, 18, of Dallas, wore extremely loose pants, but his shirt was also very long. He said that if someone's look includes showing their underwear, it's just a matter of style, not something that should be banned.

Besides, he said, he wouldn't want to get fined if his pants slipped.

Kendall Beck, 26, of Dallas, was wearing low pants, but his shirt was also long and tucked in. He said that he agreed with the proposal that people should be fined for showing their underwear.

"You've got to be presentable," he said. Besides, showing underwear with super baggy pants is a look that's "played out," he said.

Ruppert, for one, agrees.

She said the current fashion pendulum is swinging heavily in another direction this fall: super skinny pants for both men and women.

"It is a radical jump this season, very thin leggings," Ruppert said.

Oh, no... can't we all just wear things that FIT? I swear, if I start seeing giant knee-length button-down "bigshirts" and skin-tight black leggings being worn by middle-aged women again, I'm going to have to gouge out my eyes.