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The fashion statement was believed to have become mainstream in the late 1990s, and the answer as to why pants were ever worn as such varies, but the consensus notes that it's related to the state penitentiary.
Unless bright orange is your gang color, your fellow confined gang members won't easily identify you while dressed in a prison uniform. (Remember the one leg up, one leg down fashion last decade? Same thing.) So wearing the pants low signified this exclusive
membership.
The other school of thought was that with no belts in prison -- or shoe laces (see Run DMC) -- your pants tended to sag. No belts or shoelaces means no hangings or stranglings in the hoosegow. If you wanted folks on the outside to know you were jail-hardened, the fashion statement was to wear saggy pants and shoes without
laces.
Of course, skateboard punks wore their pants saggy, too, simply because it's easier to do bends and whatnot while working the halfpipe.
But after a few years, fashion designers begin picking up the cues and mass marketing them. Now we call it "urban" clothing, and that has racial connotations to some.
But whatever the origin, Jasper County isn't having it. So much so that on Monday the County Council approved a reading of an ordinance that would actually criminalize wearing saggy pants in public.
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It might be distasteful to some, and it might be offensive to others. It actually may be a distraction in the schools. But since forever, kids have been figuring out ways to not conform, and expression through clothing -- sideward caps, caveman boots, slashed shirts, cross-
dressing -- even zoot suits for those of you old enough to remember. Were these as offensive? Maybe, maybe not.
But go figure: In a county that has drug-selling and trafficking, shootings, domestic violence and carjacking, a priority for the
Sheriff's Office this year would be to apprehend saggy-pants-wearing kids?
Now that would be a waste of time and, especially, resources.
The ordinance would ban anyone from wearing their pants more than 3 inches below their hips "and thereby exposing his or her skin or intimate clothing." The ordinance calls for a maximum penalty of $500 and, ironically, 30 days
in jail.
But a local government can't attach criminal penalties to an act that the state legislature hasn't deemed criminal. Local governments can ban wearing saggy pants in public; they just can't throw someone in jail or fine them legally. In essence,
Jasper County is in the process of, well, breaking the law.
Here's what the state Supreme Court says: "Local governments may not criminalize conduct that is legal under a statewide criminal law."
That seems pretty cut and dried to us, but we'll see if the Jasper County Council continues with its plight to become the Lowcountry's fashion police.
Unfortunately, you can't enforce good taste. That job is reserved for parents and role models to instill in kids.
But rest assured, just like disco and foot binding, this, too, shall pass.
