It's the law: No sagging pants in Chicago suburb

Jul 20, 2:06 PM (ET)

LYNWOOD, Ill. (AP) - Be careful if you have saggy pants in the south Chicago suburb of Lynwood. Village leaders have passed an ordinance that would levy $25 fines against anyone showing three inches or more of their underwear in public.

Eugene Williams is the mayor of Lynwood. He says young men walk around town half-dressed, keeping major retailers and economic development away. He calls the new law a hot topic.

The American Civil Liberties Union says the ordinance targets young men of color.

Young adults in the village, like 21-year-old Joe Klomes, say the new law infringes on their personal style. He says leaders should instead spend money on making the area look nicer.

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Seems to me that's exactly what they're doing......

Every generation freaks out about the appearance of the next. The same dottering prigs who are trying to enforce a no-peaking-underwear rule against today's young people were, themselves, subject to similarly inane fashion-police efforts in their day. It wasn't that long ago that there were rules about boys having long hair and girls having skirts above the knee. Not too long before that, there were rules about "greasers" with their antisocial leather jackets and slicked hair. These stupid reactionary bouts of neopuritanism are as old as time itself. There was a time when the idea of a woman wearing trousers was deeply scandalous, and a time before that when a gentleman who went out in public without a powdered wig might as well have gone out naked.

At least the fools give us something to laugh at. The generation that sported psychodelic clothes and long hair is now clucking like imbeciles at the generation that wears baggy pants, and in twenty years they'll be working hard to get themselves into a ludicrous tizzy about their own children's fashion innovations.

....if the personal style suddenly changes to going butt-naked, or wearing swastikas, we should not "freak-out", and the people who live in those neighborhoods (you know, the ones who pay property taxes), should just shut up and get used to it. If they don't, they are fools and only worth being laughed at and being the subject of derision......

Pretty much. I suppose there are hygiene arguments against allowing full nudity in most public situations, and I'm not going to be happy with swastikas (though I'll protect people's right to wear them) in light of the Nazi associations they have for most people, but I'm not going to freak out one way or the other. I simply accept that young people will choose outfits designed to set them apart from their elders. Their punishment will be looking back in 20 years and realizing their "trendy" clothes look about as hip, in retrospect, as leisure suits and poodle skirts and ripped up Sex Pistols shirts.

If you decide one day that it would be "hip" to walk around downtowm with your genitals exposed, you'll of course likely end up in the company of law enforcement. As a society, we have a right to set certain standards, though someone might argue that's capricious and arbitrary. Some people feel it is an infringement of their rights to not be allowed to be nude in public. Society disagrees.

No one is telling these people to cut their hair or wear a suit and tie. They are saying not to publically display more that three inches of their underwear. That seems to be a pretty reasonable standard. Since there are likely children in the area, not allowing teenagers to wear their pants around their ankles is hardly puritanical.