Should belt-less pants, showing boxers or a whale tail, be banned?

Results so far:

Yes		43%	224 votes	Total: 524 votes
No		57%	300 votes	Total: 524 votes

Yes

1 of 17

Every generation has had its standards of "Dressing for Conformity". During the Depression, it was long pants instead of knee pants for the guys and a call to career-wear for the girls. In the Fifties, it was rolled up jeans, white shirts and white socks. For the sexually explicit Sixties, it was all about bikinis for the girls and long hair with beards for the guys, and the beat goes on.

Today's young men have adopted a ritual that actually originated in our prison system. This custom of wearing the pants low enough to reveal a man's underwear is a not so subtle way of showing a willingness to conform to the role of a submissive, subservient member, (also defined as low man on the totem pole), of prison society. Most often, this behavior blatantly advertises the willingness to participate in homosexuality in order to:

A. publicly give up personal power,
B. and allow someone else to dominate one's life.

The question is, "Should these belt-less pants, showing boxers or a whale tail, be banned". Given the connotation of this particular style and where it began, my gut reaction is to ban them. Yes, ban them wholeheartedly with the help of the law of the land. But, is that what we want here in these United States of America to start dictating what a free human being will or will not wear? Maybe the answer here is to ban them, not with legal proclamations and regulations, but by implementing a humanitarian ban, an act of social peer pressure utilizing boycotts to promote freedom. What would it mean to a teenage girl to know that the guy she has had her eye on, who is currently holding her hand, is displaying a signal that denotes his willingness to participate in a sexual act that mandates his being someone's minion, or slave. What does a young man scouting out the town for babes think when he sees his friend displaying the willingness to be another man's property? Does a male teenager already dealing with the pressure of sexual identity and questioning his ability to fulfill the "Virginal Quest" really want to send out these dehumanizing, emasculating signals?

Don't ban the right for a free human being to wear what they want to wear. Rather ban the practice of participating in or condoning an act that promotes the dehumanizing exploitation and degradation of a human being. The fact of the matter is, wearing belt-less pants and showing boxers or a whale tail is practically screaming, "I want to be your dominated doormat". I'm not sure this is the message a generation trying to define its identity, while blindly searching the path of self-reliance and freedom, wants to promote.

I say Start the Ban. Educate the Man.

Learn more about this author, Dryw Arian.
Click here to send Author comments or questions.

No

1 of 59

by Sara Mcgrath

Hear the moral outcry: Raise the waistlines! No more unwanted exposure to elastic waistbands!

The outlawing of low-cut pants would, presumably, protect the potentially offended from unwanted exposure to . . . hip bones?

I grew up in a city where women could legally go shirtless. My mother and I often passed a woman in the neighborhood who went out dressed in cut-off jeans and a butterfly painted across her chest. My mother would say, "Isn't she beautiful!"

Breastfeeding mothers needed not worry about arrest for indecent exposure, regardless of any moral objection.

Not everyone shared my mother's view of topless women, of course. But my fellow residents all came to terms with it in their own way. The majority had, after all, voted down attempts by offended folks to outlaw women, but not men, from going topless.

A memorable anecdote from a woman traveling in a country where women had to wear clothing that covered them from head to foot told of her surprise upon seeing a veiled woman breastfeeding her baby with both breast completely exposed.

Everyone has their own moral ideas. Do we really want to pass laws to support one group, but not another, or worse, to support them all? When would it end? If we allow the outlaw of certain styles, the list will only lengthen.

I don't like to see people exposing their bodies for unhealthy reasons. That's one interpretation of the extreme low-cut pants and underwear accessories. However, I also see these styles as a rebellious response to body repression.

I remember a proposal to ban UK men from going shirtless in public. My high school enforced several clothing bans: overalls, handkerchiefs tied over the hair, certain colors. The response of the majority of students was to protest. Kids who had never worn overalls or handkerchiefs began to do so.

Can you guess the reasons for a ban on overalls? How about handkerchiefs? Overalls were deemed dangerous. The straps could come undone and strike someone. The handkerchiefs and colors were an attempt to prevent gang identification. What my school's officials tried to do is no different from what a government would try to do with the general populace. Regardless of their reasons, laws designed to protect certain groups from offense carry too much potential for getting out of hand. Imagine a ban on tie-dye or baseball caps, perhaps just certain teams.

The laws for all would be worse than the offense of some.

Learn more about this author, Sara Mcgrath.
Click here to send Author comments or questions.