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>Hohohohoho. Tell me about it. I think there's all the difference in the world, though, between dressing like a farmer, mill worker, stevedore or whatever and wearing an inmate's uniform.
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>Carl
:) one of the reasons why i that of ha hahaha was i couldn't help but think of tom wolfe's _bonfire of the vaniety_ where he touches on, in a round about way, the valorization of the oppressed and downtrodden. i think he does this in another peice about mau mauing but can't recall.
i don't see how one is better or worse than the other. and frankly, this is old fucking news. the whole boxers sticking outside the pants, well heck a great deal of hip hop fashion, emerged from prison "fashion"
if the folks in the 60s were doing it to signify their identification with the worker who, by all accounts, is a "wage slave" and today's kids are doing it to signify their identification with the imprisoned, i would suggest to you that both do it for similar reasons -- both groups are seen as the "oppressed"
i agree with woj in that while some of it emerges from the street, the fashion industry, by all accounts, hires its cool hunters to keep up with the trends. they are then quickly appropriated and turned into the latest hip fashion. the constant movement with the trends, the surging forth to meet new one, only inspires the kids who want to be cool to continually seek out new and different fashions in order to keep ahead of the pack. can't recall for the life of me where i've read this, though i know i'm drawing on both an article _cool hunters_ in the Atlantic Monthly and on tricia rose's _black noise_.
at any rate, aren't there just a million and one things to get upset about that are more important than this. sure, might be an indicator, but, from what i've seen around here (minority white neighborhood) most kids don't have a klew where these fashions come from or what they mean. they just want to wear them.
here's another interesting, tho subjective indicator. i had to deal with a bunch of kids trying to beat up my son's friends, jared and malcolm. both of them are black but constantly under attack by other black kids. so he's hanging out at my place while we figure out how he's going to negotiate the dozen or so kids milling about waiting to start something.
one by one or so, they come knocking and each time when i went to the door and start "lecturing" i got " yo, i gots a mamma too and she be comin to whoop yo ass"
:) while the "my mamma will whoop yo ass" part isn't particularly new to me, the part that i found a little disconcerting was that bragging rights now are a "concerned mama" to begin with.
kelley