'Sagging' and Sexuality

After reading part II of the Kunzel reading, I keep coming back to something I have seen posted on facebook several times – unfortunately as lately as last month.

Snopes.com disproved this belief already in 2011.   Sagging did not start as a way to advertise for sex in male prisons.  Although it did start in prisons, sagging became a trend after inmates were supplied with clothing several sizes too big, and were not provided belts.  Belts apparently, are considered an all-too-easy way to hang one’s self.

This specific image and accompanying text plays on homophobia and racism in an attempt to invalidate a subculture in the US.   The trend is not about advertising sexuality, but perhaps surviving ‘the system,’ and projecting an association with an alpha-male or alpha identity.  By suggesting that these same men could be engaging in gay sex is an attempt to invalidate a gendered, hetero-normative form of masculinity or alpha status in an already impoverished and disempowered community. 

One could argue the appropriation of sagging by youth en masse is yet another layer to this issue.  What began as an act of appropriation for the sake of cool is now a way to humiliate and denigrate.  Both are attempts at maintaining power in our society, just in slightly different ways.  Appropriation takes away cultural authority and autonomy, while humiliating black men becomes a way for those in power to maintain and reinforce status.

Although this style seems to be falling out of favor, I am sure other styles are emerging that will soon be associated not only with criminality, but sexuality as well.  The combination of what some consider a deviant sexuality and criminality, as Kunzel points out, is interlinked.  We really have not made much progress on this front in the last 100 years, despite some recent inroads to decriminalizing homosexuality.