1- What do Sagging Pants Signify and Why Do We Care?

Why are people so determined to end a fashion trend, however fickle or even "shocking?" I have some ideas, and would like to explore them here:


Sagging Pants = Criminality.
Of course the big myth is that people who sag their pants do so because they have been to prison where people cannot wear belts because the prisoners are on suicide watch. Prisoners aren't the only people who don't wear belts. Psychiatric patients, people who don't own belts, plumbers, and many other people have sagging pants. If the prison myth is true, it is because prisons give ill fitting clothes to their prisoners. In that respect, sagging pants is a nod to the carelessness with which we treat our prisoners. Some say that we should be careless with prisoners because they deserve it. That is to say, that it is just that we treat prisoners with the same disregard that they treated society when they committed whatever crime it was that put them in prison in the first place. Is that our reason for keeping people in prison? If we are going to spend some $30,000 a year to keep each individual in prison, we are going to have to eventually let them out and back into society. I think most people agree that most prisoners should eventually be released. There aren't too many people outside of the Taliban who argue for life or death for marijuana consumption. If we do have to release prisoners, don't we wish that our money were being spent wisely, not carelessly. Are sagging pants a reminder of that carelessness, and because we live in a republican society, is that a reminder of our own carelessness? Many people who wear sagging pants have never been to prison, and there is absolutely no hard link of any kind connecting sagging pants to prison, except in the minds of those who insist that sagging pants have in fact derived from prisons. However, many have linked sagging pants and prison. That link would be disturbing if it were an indicator to those people in society that our justice system is in tatters. The fact that young men (and women) purposefully emulate prisoners tells us something about our society that we hate to admit. It tells us that there are many who prefer to look and act like the ostracized, rather than partake willingly as full fledged citizens in our society. Is our prison system so pleasant, or is it that our justice system is so unjust that young people attempt to cast off its legitimacy by invoking the lowest victims of that justice system? More to come.