Photo via GQ
NY senator Eric Adams is running a campaign to end sagging. Read Dwayne Yates' commentary on sagging and more about Adams below.
By Dwayne Yates
I remember the day I started sagging my pants. I was 13, in the seventh grade and was walking home from school. It was a warm, spring day. I know so because I remember I wasn't wearing a jacket. I actually remember exactly what I was wearing. On top, I had on a blue and orange plaid Ecko shirt and a pair of jeans by the Tommy Hilfiger brand.
I only remember one thing from the day at school preceding this walk. I had a conflict with a white girl concerning my mixing Tommy and Ecko. I quickly shut her down by saying something sharp advising her not to mix Wal-Mart and KMart.
She didn't change my mind about how I dressed--I just remember that exchange too vividly to leave it out of this story. It was all my peers that prompted this change in the way I wore my pants.
If there is one thing I remember about middle school, it is how judgmental everyone was toward one another. If someone had bad hair, their hair was the day's topic of discussion. If you wore the same jeans more than one day a week, people noticed and told you they noticed. I remember people always had something to say about the clothes I wore. My mother kept me draped in turtlenecks, button ups, and khakis. People called me white because that and my vernacular. If being different was a crime, being "white" was a felony five.
I now know that people may have been jealous of me and I should have stayed true to myself, but that teenage insecurity got the best of me, and on that warm spring day in Akron, the world got its first glimpse of my butt cheeks.
By tenth grade, I was wearing tall, white tees so you couldn't see what color my underwear were no matter how low my pants were. I was also looking like less of a gentleman than ever. I dressed so thuggish I had people believing I was someone I wasn't. And, I am pleased to say that those days are over. With the help of college and adulthood, I am more of a gentleman than ever. Now, I see young men--even little cousins--with the same sagging problem that I had just two years ago and sigh.
As black men, we don't have control over many things in this world. One thing we do have control over, though, is how we dress. More importantly, we have control over how low we wear our pants.
I remember rap music was at the height of its profitability during my years in middle and high school. Rappers seemed to have it all: Money, cars, clothes and hoes. They also had a specific look to them. You could even call it a uniform: Big shirt or Jersey, baggy jeans, chain, hat cocked and a du-rag present. Take a second and look around you. If there are any brothas around, what are they wearing? If it's what I just described, they're subject to this media brainwashing rap music has left in the black community on how men should dress. They're also living in the past.
The trend of wearing huge, unflattering clothing is on the decline. This could be due to a new social climate in America. The president is black. That has already changed the attitudes of people in this country, no matter their color. President Obama is always dapper and wearing a suit.
Music has also changed. Pop music is on top, and the last super-star rapper, Jay-Z, is a business mogul who traded in his tees for tailor-made suits. The other greatest rapper alive, Lil' Wayne, wears skinny jeans and plays guitar. With these and many more black men breaking norms, black culture has changed and is changing at a rate faster than it took for America to get its first black president.
There are still some who are not progressing, though. Not all black men want to look like they have somewhere to be in twenty minutes. Some would much rather street trap and goon all day long in their jeans that touch the ground.
New York senator Eric Adams is running a campaign to end sagging. His slogan is "Raise your pants, raise your image!" It makes sense to me. If people don't see your derrière in the first thirty seconds of knowing you, they might have a little more respect for you.
Even if the political move does make sense, Russell Simmons thinks the senator buying eight billboards in Brooklyn to spread his message is a waste of time. He says kids don't want to dress like Sen. Adams.
I don't want to dress like Sen. Adams, but I like his message. Let's remember that Simmons made millions of dollars off of sagging with his popular clothing line Phat Farm. Lines like Phat Farm and Ecko aren't making money anymore, though, because their clothes had no longevity. They were static. They cashed in off the street wear trend, but now the climate has changed so Simmons is biased. It's definitely not a waste of time to encourage young, black men to take pride in their appearance. I just don't know if spending state dollars on eight billboards is smart in these economic times. It just may be a waste of money.
I feel that there is a renaissance on the horizon. In bigger cities, black men and women are taking pride in how they dress. They pay attention to detail and even include ethnic accessories and patterns in their wardrobes. I admit that sometimes my pants find their way below my ass, but I take time to pull them up. Degrading yourself to fit in with people who degrade themselves makes no sense. Don't settle for a life you weren't destined to live.
