Saggy pants ban held unconstitutional in Florida

A Florida judge has ruled a state law banning saggy pants unconstitutional. See it here.

Bravo!

The rise -- or more accurately, the lowering -- of saggy pants, like so many things is, by any reasonable measure, an inane phenomenon -- from an aesthetic standpoint, from a mobility standpoint, from the standpoint that the purveyors of this fashion statement will find it difficult to get a job -- you name it. (And, yes, I am one of those old-fashioned people who believe there is an aesthetic consensus that enables enlightened people to know that a Monet is great art while graffiti generally is not, and that saggy pants are ugly.)

But for some reason, the cultural statement underlying this fashion trend is somehow vaguely threatening or offensive to a sizable segment of society.

So we enact laws to ban it? Exactly when did we, as a society, reach the point that we feel justified in dictating to others that they can't wear their clothes stupidly?

The fact is, these saggy pants laws are a form of racial and gender discrimination. And black teenage boys have enough troubles -- starting with "enlightened" government policies going back to the Johnson administration that encouraged their fathers to leave them -- without brandishing an absurd law in their faces, or their butts, banning saggy pants -- just so we can make a statement that we disapprove of their culture.

But then again, we're kind of hung up on teenage clothing, aren't we?

Most of us have seen teen girls wear clothes -- or again, more accurately, not wear clothes -- with the likely intention of arousing the sexual passions of members of the opposite sex. While it is politically correct to pretend that their motives are indifferent to arousing sexual passions in males, or that it must be assumed that "they dress to please themselves, not some boy," most people not fatally infected by politically correct thinking understand that girls who dress in that manner generally do it to attract the attention of boys. (And here I'm talking about extreme skimpy.) So what's the problem? The girls who do it like it; the boys they're around like it. The only ones who don't like it are the parents who think that teenage boys turn into the Wolf Man at the sight of female flesh, ready to rape and impregnate our defenseless young damsels.

Do I wish kids would control that sexual passion until they are old enough to handle it? You bet. Should skimpy clothes be outlawed, or banned on airplanes, because they "offend" some prudish old woman?

No more than saggy pants should be banned.

Wouldn't it be nice if each of us could, just for a day, stop being "offended" by everyone else's conduct?