Schools reflect saggy sartorial standards
New York
If one man's meat is another man's poison, then one man's fashion can be another man's offence. That may explain why saggy trousers have become a target for the authorities.
Influenced by the hip-hop culture, an increasing number of boys have been wearing trousers dangling below the hips with their underwear exposed in recent years. But now the fashion is under attack, as more and more 'grown-ups' in positions of power consider it to be shameful and disrespectful, and, as a result, an increasing number of towns have been debating whether to make the style illegal.
But in New York City, the fashion is likely to be legal a while longer. The Department of Education, despite its iron-fist policy on other aspects of school life, doesn't seem to be interested in kids' wardrobes.
In some ways, today's New York is an unlikely place for tolerance towards saggy trousers. It is, after all, a city where a series of stiff dress codes are set by investment bankers, socialites and celebrities, where one mismatching accessory is likely to be a damaging faux pas, and a city that likes to regard itself as a fashion centre of the world. (Fashion week is about to start.) It is also a city that has a reputation as a 'nanny state' for setting everything from dancing and smoking bans to noise restrictions and curbs on trans-fats in food.
The campus dress codes in many other school districts in neighbouring New Jersey and Connecticut are often pages long, with prohibitions on everything from flip flops to sunglasses and specifics about how tight is too tight, how short is too short and how much underwear showing is too much. But in the new version of its discipline code, New York's Department of Education says children may only be disciplined for their outfits when they are 'unsafe or disruptive to the educational process'.
'We don't have any type of standard dress policy. Most of that happens at the school level. So there are some schools where you are not allowed to wear hats inside and others where you are,' said Dina Paul Parks, a department spokeswoman. The agency has no specific view on saggy trousers.
The city hasn't always been as indifferent. There were efforts to mandate uniforms in public schools in the late 1990s but the policy didn't last long amid a lack of wholehearted support from some parents, the reluctance of principals to enforce it and, of course, opposition from the children themselves.
Students got more freedom after the city three years ago settled a lawsuit filed by a 15-year-old lesbian student who was suspended for wearing a T-shirt that read 'Barbie is a Lesbian'. They now have the right to wear 'political or other types of buttons, badges or armbands'.
Some parents are not impressed. 'New York is liberal and sometimes too liberal,' said Pauline Chu, president of the Chinese-American Parents' Association and a supporter of uniforms for students.
'Kids should be focusing on study not their clothes. And some of the styles they like, the saggy pants, jeans with holes, are just ugly.'
But random conversations with youngsters shopping for the coming new school year at chain stores like American Eagle and Forever 21 indicate that saggy trousers will have a prosperous new school year. 'I wear them almost every day. I never get trouble at school,' said Jasdip Singh, a third-year student at a high school where only hats seem to be banned.
Katrina Flores, a second-year student from a different high school, said her school had no problem with boys' saggy trousers either, but girls don't have as much freedom.
'We are not allowed to expose bra straps or wear tank tops, which I think is ridiculous,' she said. 'We should have the right to wear whatever we want.'
When it comes to undergarments, it seems that in New York gender equality has its limits.
