Algernon Austin presents an excellent, concise, and wonderfully read scholarly examination of the complicated landscape of race, class and popular perception. Besides the prison industrial complex, black strides in education, poverty rates, crime and other indices contradict claims that blacks are “moving backward.”--Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, Director, Institute for African American Studies, University of Connecticut and author of Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity (The Johns Hopkins University Press), 2004 and Hip-Hop Revolution: The Culture and Politics of Rap (University Press of Kansas), 2007.
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[The following is a draft of an op-ed piece which appeared in the New Haven Register.]
Is the Rise of Fashion Policing a Sign of a Deeper Problem?
Once upon a time, the idea of a “fashion police” was just an amusing metaphor. Not anymore. A small but growing number of communities, mainly in the South, are indeed requiring police to fine or jail people for the fashion of wearing their pants low enough to reveal their underwear. A Stratford, Connecticut councilman, Alvin O’Neal, recently proposed a similar law. Wisely, the town council rejected the legislation.These laws do not make sense. They are not what they claim to be about. If one is offended by the public display of people in underwear then shouldn’t Victoria’s Secret and Calvin Klein underwear ads be high on one’s hit list. Of course, Victoria’s Secret and Calvin Klein are just the most prominent among the underwear advertisers. Even this newspaper distributes advertising with pictures of people in underwear. As pervasive as underwear advertising is, one hears no mention of calls to ban this advertising among those who claim to be offended by the sight of underwear.
Of course, one should not stop at advertising. Swimming suits look remarkably like underwear. Revealing those would have to be outlawed too. So, maybe the anti-underwear lawmakers will propose banning swimming next.
Nicole Kidman and the editors of Vanity Fair who have Kidman showing her bra on the cover of this month’s issue should be fined or jailed also. And all of the other magazines showing bras or bikinis on their covers, from Sports Illustrated for the Swimsuit Issue to Shape magazine, would have to be punished also.
It is not unusual for people to be offended by new fashion styles. In the 1960s, adults were scandalized by men’s long hair, big afros, and mini-skirts. In the 1970s, the spiked and neon dyed hair and torn clothes of punks shocked many. In the 1980s, Madonna made bras and bustiers outerwear causing some outrage. In the 1990s, droopy pants arrived. The shock, anger, and outrage that followed were not surprising. The idea to put people in jail for their sagging pants is.
How did we get here? Why is it that at this point in time criminalizing fashion seems like a good idea to some lawmakers? How did people become so cavalier about restricting American’s rights to freedom of expression? These laws seem to be symptoms of a deeper problem.
The fact of the matter is that these laws are not about decency in the sense that they have been crafted. Councilman Alvin O’Neal revealed as much when he stated, “We’re not out to get plumbers whose pants creep down while working on your pipes.” But why not? Why is the top of a plumber’s butt okay but boxer shorts are not? Boxer shorts are in fact clothing, which should be preferable to an actual butt partially exposed by a plumber. O’Neal’s preference for actual partial nudity over boxer shorts, shows that this has nothing to do with protecting our eyes.
The idea that the problem is that this style may have arisen in prisons is not very convincing. Many of the most violent criminal gang members have tattoos, but I haven’t heard of anyone trying to outlaw tattoos. At least, not yet.
What are these laws really about, then? These laws seem crafted to hurt a despised population, not to protect the public from the “harm” of seeing people’s underwear. The lawmakers seem to have little respect for the rights of the type of people who they believe expose their boxer shorts, but they still do have respect for the rights and needs of the type of people they think become plumbers.
Maybe I am wrong about this issue. Maybe it is simply that fewer Americans value our freedoms today. After all, Congress recently expanded the government’s powers to spy on Americans without a warrant, weakening our Fourth Amendment rights. Maybe we simply value our freedoms less today than in the past.
My parents often were not happy with my choice of clothing and grooming. Since they have passed, my older brother has taken over their role. Every time I see him, he tells me I need to get a haircut. Every time! This is his right. This is a legitimate type of pressure for him to exert to get me to meet his standards. I, however, still don’t conform enough for his tastes. As recalcitrant as my brother thinks I am, he has never considered it a criminal offense.
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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.
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