A recent wave of legislation attempted to ban popular fashion in Louisiana. If New Orleans history is any indication, the fight isn’t over yet.
By Denise Trowbridge
Louisiana plumbers, teenagers and fashionistas, relax — you don’t have to go out and buy new pants. In late May, House Bill 1703 failed in the Louisiana legislature by a narrow margin. The bill, which garnered media attention in cities from Los Angeles to England, sought to ban low-slung pants that intentionally exposed thongs and boxer shorts. It also would have made too much skin — especially anything vaguely resembling a “plumber’s crack” — downright illegal.
Luckily, fashionable young adults do not have to rid their closets of hip-hugging pants and navel baring t-shirts — at least not yet.
While House Bill 1703 did not become a law, Louisiana and New Orleans, in particular, have a history of turning what people do and don’t wear into a criminal offense. And if past attempts are any indication, area politicians are not going to throw in the towel just yet.
Watch What You Wear, A History
On a balmy June afternoon, Anne Larue took a walk down St. Charles Avenue in a white silk dress accented with a red sash. Her ensemble, though fashionable, was illegal.
It happened in 1862, at the height of the Civil War. Union General Benjamin Butler had placed the city under marshal law and when he took power a month earlier, issued a public decree outlawing all flags, signs and symbols of the Confederate States of America.
The blonde-haired and blue-eyed Larue was arrested and sentenced to two years of hard labor for wearing red and white — they were Confederate colors. When Butler asked her why she blatantly defied the law, Larue simply replied, “I was feeling very patriotic that day.”
On the same day, John W. Andrews, who had been a member of the New Orleans City Council before the occupation, was arrested for wearing a Confederate-themed lapel pin to the Louisiana Social Club. He was also convicted and sentenced to hard labor.
Larue and Andrews were, by all accounts, the first well-documented victims of the New Orleans fashion police. But city codes and legal battles dictating what citizens could and could not do with their clothing didn’t stop when the war ended.
“Legislation attempting to regulate what people wear is nothing new,” says M. David Gelfand, the Ashton Phelps chair and professor of constitutional law at the Tulane law school. “In the 1960s and ‘70s, the schools debated about how long a boy’s hair could be. Then there was a wave of litigation revolving around children wearing T-shirts that schools considered inappropriate.”
Gelfand, who has participated extensively in litigation dealing with self expression issues, once defended a man who was arrested for jogging without a shirt in Palm Beach, Fla. “It may seem silly at first, but these kinds of cases are important because it’s a mistake for government to legislate fashion.”
Clothing and fashion, he says, are a First Amendment issue. “When government tries to tell you how to dress, what to wear, and how to look and act because they think they know what is best for the community, there is a problem,” Gelfand adds. “Freedom means being able to make those choices for yourself, even if you look silly and out of place.”
But First Amendment concerns haven’t stopped New Orleans from passing — or attempting to pass — fashion laws. In 1866, Article 696 of “The Laws and General Ordinances of the City of New Orleans” stated that any person who appeared in public within the city limits in “indecent apparel” would be arrested and fined.
Current city codes allow employers to ban cross-dressing on company time and require licensed massage therapists to be clothed from neck to knee in opaque, light-colored clothing while plying their trade. Female spa-goers should also beware — the city council says you have to wear panties and a bra if you want your massage to be legal.
Baggy pants bans are also nothing new. Before Rep. Derrick Shepherd, D-Marrero, arrived at the state capital on April 20 with his heart set on criminalizing underwear-exposing pants in public, several other New Orleans politicians tried to pass similar laws. In 1999, Cynthia Willard-Lewis, who was then a state legislator and is now the city council representative for District E, attempted to regulate baggy pants in Louisiana public schools. A year later, Orleans Parish Deputy Assessor Donald Smith proposed the first citywide ordinance banning low-riding pants. And in 2002, Westwego City Councilman Glenn Green proposed a similar law in his town.
All were unsuccessful, but according to Green, that wasn’t the point.
“The point of proposing legislation is to make parents and elders aware of the problem so they will catch the hint and do something about their children’s clothing,” he says. “The point of making the law is to raise awareness of the problem.”
And even though Green attempted to ban baggy pants in Westwego, he isn’t certain that the government should act as fashion police. “I don’t know if it’s the government’s place to legislate fashion, but I do know that someone has to cry out now before it gets worse.”
The Belt Campaign
Shepherd’s baggy pants law created a media frenzy. The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the British Broadcasting Company covered the legislation. A spoof even appeared on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.”
Joe Cook, the executive director of the Louisiana American Civil Liberties Union, says the bill was not only ridiculous, but bad for Louisiana. “It was a stupid bill and it made us an international laughing stock. Newspapers and TV stations all over the world covered it,” he says. “It’s not good for business. Who wants to come to a state that sends a message of intolerance, or says that you can be harassed by the police for not being fashionable?”
But while the state grappled with the question of whether or not the government should police fashion, several Louisiana townships didn’t hesitate. Bastrop and Opelousas passed ordinances banning baggy pants, and they are enforcing them. The ACLU would love to overturn the laws, but there’s just one problem — no one who has been arrested for breaking them is fighting the charges. “We need someone to stand up and fight the law in order to get it removed from the books,” Cook says. “But most of them don’t want to bother. It’s easier to just pay the fine and go home.”
For Cook, the issue it clear. “It’s a First Amendment issue of free speech and expression,” he says. Bills like these also undermine what it means to be an American. “People came to the United States to escape tyranny and to live in a free and democratic society. Supreme Court Justice Brandeis said it best when he said ‘the right we should value the most is the right to be left alone.’”
But for community groups and politicians who have supported these laws, freedom shouldn’t come at the expense of community standards. “I am tired of seeing buttocks and dirty underwear hanging out of the back of baggy pants. I’ve seen kids who’s pants are so low they have to grab their crotch to keep them from falling down,” Green says. “It’s gotten to the point where it is ridiculous. As a community, we have to say ‘wait a minute. We are decent, god-fearing people and we need to have limits.’
“I’m not a prude and I’m not a conservative,” Green adds, “but some things should remain private and someone’s butt is one of those things.”
Cook, on the other hand, has a simple solution that doesn’t involve passing a new law. “If low-riding pants really bother you so much, stop that person and offer them a belt,” he says. “If you are really that concerned, you could start a good belt campaign.”
That, he says, would free up time for legislators to deal with more serious issues, like education and poverty. He notes that the time and energy Louisiana has spent discussing fashion hints at an even greater problem. “We don’t have a saggy pants problem,” Cook says, “we have a saggy gray matter problem.”