Pull Up Your Pants!
Written by Tara Leonard
SANTA CRUZ (April, 2009) -- It’s official. I’m old. I didn’t feel that way when I got married and had two kids. It barely crossed my mind when I plucked those first gray hairs and then, without a whimper, turned 40. (40 is the new 30, right?) No, I didn’t actually realize I was old until I heard myself saying to my 13-year-old son, “Pull up your pants! You look like a hoodlum!” With that simple phrase, I joined the pantheon of parents throughout the ages who have responded to their children’s fashion choices with confusion and disapproval. I’ve crossed a line and there’s no going back. And that line hovers just south of my adolescent son’s narrow hips.
Take a walk down Pacific Avenue here in Santa Cruz and you’ll see, well, way more than you want to, of teenage boys’ rear ends. Everywhere you look colorful boxers spill over the top of saggy, low-riding trousers, some of which are belted at the tops of the thighs rather than anywhere near a waistline. The pants pool at the ankles, a wrinkled mass of fabric riding over gigantic basketball or skater shoes. Where you expect to the see the seat of one’s pants, with back pockets and maybe a designer logo, you see underwear if you’re lucky and flesh if you’re less so. And don’t even get me started on the girls, with their “muffin top” of loose skin squeezed out between low-slung jeans and a belly-baring tank, thong in full view. It’s part and parcel of the popular fashion that my son thinks is cool and I find at best, unattractive, and at worst, obscene. Pull up your pants!
I’m not alone in my distaste. A number of towns across American have attempted to ban the wearing of saggy trousers, deeming it indecent exposure, with penalties from fines to jail time. But those efforts have been stymied by opponents, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) who deem them a threat to freedom of expression and, in several cases, “racial profiling.”
That’s because baggy, low-slung pants were originally popularized in the early 1990s by black hip hop and gangsta rap artists, in a supposed nod to prison attire. (Prisoners aren’t allowed to wear belts, thus their standard-issue prison pants hang low.) But as with any type of anti-establishment youth trend, the true origins of the low-rider look are murky and undocumented. The fashion quickly morphed and multiplied, spreading across racial, economic and cultural boundaries.
And thus the dilemma for liberal parents of a certain age, who can’t decide whether to laugh or cry when our offspring come waddling into the dining room, the crotch of their pants hanging mid-thigh, boxers bringing up the rear. Pull up your pants!
“They’re just boxers,” my son counters. “It’s no different than wearing a bathing suit!” “This isn’t the beach,” I respond. “They’re underwear. I don’t need to see them on a daily basis and neither does anyone else.”
Still, a part of me is sympathetic. I understand that fashion is a form of cultural expression. I lived through bell bottoms, leg warmers, platform shoes, Farah Fawcett hair, and disco jump suits. I remember fighting with my own parents about tube tops, pierced ears, and nothing-between-me-and-my-Calvin’s blue jeans. I wore ripped, off-the-shoulder “Flashdance” sweatshirts and “Like a Virgin” fishnet stockings, but still managed to go to college, find a job, and stay out of jail. Like teenagers throughout the ages, my son and his friends are literally trying on identities that they find cool or defiant, ones that make the statement to parents, “I am not you.”
So I’ll play my part. What’s the point of fashion rebellion if no one, not even your out-of-it, old fashioned mother, protests? Count on me to roll my eyes and sigh heavily. I’ll say things like, “How can you even walk in those?” and “Forget how a belt works?” or, when I can’t be bothered with subtlety, “Pull up your pants!”
I’ll draw some boundaries, making school and work and extended family gatherings mandatory belt events. Surely teachers, coaches and employers (not to mention college admission professionals!) deserve the respect of fully clothed teens.
But like it or not, I know that in the big picture, they’re just clothes. This fad too shall pass. One day my son will look back at himself in a family photo album and cringe with embarrassment. I look forward to that day. But for now, as long as he’s getting good grades, playing sports, hanging out with his family, and staying away from drugs and alcohol, I’ll pick my battles.
I may be old, but I’m not stupid.
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