Louisiana Town Outlaws Sagging Pants

That's right. The town of Declambre, Louisiana recently passed an ordinance that outlaws wearing baggy jeans. Offenders could face a $500 fine and up to six months in jail.

The A.P. reports:

DELCAMBRE, La. — It soon will be a crime in this Cajun-country town to let the waistband of your pants sag too low in public.
Mayor Carol Broussard has said he will sign an ordinance the town council approved this week setting penalties of up to six months in jail and a $500 fine for being caught in pants that show undergarments or certain parts of the body.

Mr. Broussard said he has nothing against saggy pants but thinks people who wear them should use discretion. "It's gotten way out of hand out here," he said.

Albert Roy, the councilman who introduced the ordinance, said he thought the fine should be in the $25 range.

"Just wear it properly. Cover your vital parts", Delcambre mayor Carol Broussard told reporters. "I mean, if you expose your private parts, you'll get a fine. If you walk up and your pants drop, you get a fine. They're better off taking the pants off and just wearing a dress."

You'd think that in a state still reeeling from the devestation of Katrina, politicians would be more focused on some other issues like, oh, I don't know...finding housing for its thousands of displaced residents or addressing the state's public school crisis. Instead, in what can only be considered the latest public policy attack on the aesthetics and livelihood of black and brown urban youth , certain politicians have chosen to focus their energy on making criminals of the people perhaps most affected by years of fiscal and social neglect by state and federal governments. Part of the urban aesthetic (call if hip hop) is sagging jeans, a trend well popularized and worn by youth of color. Nowadays, baggy low riders can be found in such bastions of white middle class American aesthetic sensibility as Abrecrombie and Fitch. Although I'm sure half naked, clean cut white boys weren't who politicians were thinking about when they passed this new law.

Talk about offensive.