BAN THE SAG!

I find it remarkable – the latest story about the “prison chic” style of youth and their dropping pants: a politician in Brooklyn has put up billboards deploring the “sag.” Everywhere in the U.S. there are campaigns against this now long-running fashion statement. Bill Cosby, who is known and I presume detested in the black community, for his righteous indignation at what he sees as aberrant black behaviour. He has railed against the drooping pants just as he has against the, to him, ridiculous naming of black kids with made-up names that are supposed to sound African. Cosby seems to squirm whenever he fellow African Americans get out of line. In Yiddish there is an expression: A schande fur die goyim.” It means that if you are Jewish and you misbehave it is a shame paraded before the gentiles. There is more than a little self-disgust, even hatred, in these pronouncement – whether they are from the apparently (at least in his own mind) iconic Bill Cosby or a Jewish grandmother.

The story I read says that while the fad originated in the black community, where apparently it is cool to look like you were a prison inmate, the practice has spread to middle class white boys. My own grandson drove his parents crazy by showing half his underwear at all times. He has since entered the real world and dresses like a gentleman. The question is: is he now more of a gentleman because he dresses more conservatively? It all beats me.

But to give the fad its due: it does attach a kind of swagger to the young man. It exemplifies revolt. It demonstrates a certain teen male solidarity. It is as old as the hills for the rising generation to want to be seen rejecting the morals and dress of their parents’ generation. There will always be rebels. Rebellion will always be good, until it becomes violent. The right, the obligation to question is what we must have. What is increasingly missing in our society is the ability to be critical. I admit, sometimes the “criticism” is mindless and the social equivalent to sticking your tongue out.

Sadly, What always happens is that these “rebels” are seduced by reality and sometimes intimidation. By the time they reach job-holding maturity, they will conform. There will be residue – like the middle aged men who still have the pony tail they grew in their hippie years or today’s generation which will, in years to come, be recognized by their long-out-of-fashion tattoos.

We have been through it all: the social opprobrium attached to long hair when the Beatles made it popular; the schools forbidding girls’ wearing panty-revealing skirts; and even – remember this – the unacceptable wearing of slacks by women, until Yves St. Laurent made the pant suit de rigeur.

So cool it all you social reformers. The urge to punish seems to be more important than the need for change.

I have only one complaint: when will we stop the pervasive “tagging” on public places by gang-struck kids who with their paint spray cans. You see, even I have a generational intolerance.