Nov. 12--Practically overnight, the once-quiet Chicago suburb of Forest Park has become ground zero for the nationwide War on Sagging Pants.
At a village board meeting Monday, Mayor Anthony Calderone proposed an ordinance that, according to a Tribune report, would prohibit people from "wearing pants or shorts falling more than three inches below a person's hips and exposing that portion of the person's undergarments, buttocks, pubic area and/or genitals."
I'm not sure what a "pubic area and/or genitals" is, I'm no anatomist, but I do know a misguided idea when I see one.
Sagging pants bans like the one Calderone wants have been popping up across the country for years. The general sense seems to be that people -- usually young men -- who walk around with their trousers hung low are up to no good. I assume the fear is they might try to rob a belt store or hijack an elastic waistband delivery truck, but who knows.
Opponents claim the bans infringe on civil liberties and seem racially motivated. Calderone said: "This doesn't have to do with any sort of racial profiling whatsoever. In our town, it's not been any one specific color, it's been whites and blacks."
Given that the Internet was exploding Wednesday with images of Kim Kardashian's naked butt -- courtesy of a photo shoot for Paper magazine -- I'm not quite sure why anyone in this day and age would feel squeamish about a little posterior reveal.
The real problem, as I see it, is that bans like the one proposed in Forest Park overlook the primary threat facing good, hardworking people in communities across the country: pants.
Pants are awful, horrible creations. Uncomfortable, encasing and restricting, pants are nothing but leg Guantanamos, denim and corduroy and pleated-khaki prisons for our lower extremities.
I'm wearing pants as I write this, but only because our cursed workplace norms demand it, and because I worry my astonishingly sculpted calves might distract co-workers or tie up traffic on Michigan Avenue.
Given the choice, I would burn all the pants I own (one pair) and keep only shorts and a couple of loosefitting pairs of sweatpants and pajama pants for formal events and unspeakably cold days.
Those who want to punish people who wear sagging pants need to ask themselves this important question: Are the pants sagging, or is the person's buttock trying to escape the tyranny of trousers?
If it's the latter, shouldn't we help those people and their buttocks find a way to be blissfully pants-less, rather than forcing them to hike those dastardly britches back up?
We don't need to ban sagging pants. We need to ban pants, with exception of the aforementioned loose-fitting sweat and pajama variety.
Pants amnesty -- or pantsnesty -- would lead to the long sought after (by me) comfortization of America. Productivity would rise, people would be friendlier and legs could breathe easy.
I had hoped to discuss this important issue with Mayor Calderone, but he was out of town on a business trip and couldn't be reached. It's possible he was kidnapped by his pants and dragged off to endure unspeakable zipper torture, there's no way of knowing for sure.
The questions I wanted to ask the mayor included: Have you considered banning pants? What is your position on pants? and, Do you have something against people being comfortable?
Hopefully he'll respond once he returns, though I fear Calderone and others promoting sagging pants bans may be under the control of the Chino Industrial Complex. They don't want us to see that the enemy is right in our laps.
Well, technically, on our laps. Covering our laps. As well as the rest of our legs. And butts. You get the point.
According to the Tribune story, Forest Park Commissioner Chris Harris was critical of the mayor's ordinance: "(I can't believe) that it's actually happening in a municipality where I am sitting on a council ... it's disturbing."
It is disturbing, Mr. Harris. Disturbing and shortsighted.
We don't need the government trying to pull up our pants. We need it to take them off entirely.
rhuppke@tribune.com
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