If you’re a man, and you wear skinny jeans…I do NOT respect you.

 

If you’re a girl, and you let your man wear skinny jeans…I do NOT respect you.

 

 

My good friend wrote that hilarious bit on Facebook a couple of month’s ago. Typically the only thing I like tight on a man are his draws but I’m starting to rethink this male skinny jeans trend. Maybe I’ve been watching and enjoying too many jerk videos but I’ve decided to embrace the skinny with only one precaution: if you’re over the age of 18 and you’re still rockin’ skinny jeans that is definitely not a good look and I’m bound to make fun of you.     

 

While style is selective, nothing has polarized folk in recent memory as much as the skinny jean. In Southern California, where people are use to seeing dudes in dickies and chucks, skinny jeans cause more than just a side eye. There is nothing like seeing a group of 16-year-old black boys, standing on a South Central corner, with bronze Mohawks and turquoise pants. Tight. Turquoise pants.

 

 

I’ve heard older folk question these kids sexuality but let the record show that many a thugged-out homophobe embraced the skinny jean at one point. I’m looking at you Dre. O’ Shea Jackson’s jeans are looking quite snug too.

 

 

Fashion may be the only medium where people can express themselves without having to use a pen or say a word. I’d argue that no where is that more evident than in a place like Los Angeles. Southern California gang culture is so prevalent that when a young black male throws on a red shirt, or yellow shoes,  it is never whimsical. Depending on what neighborhood that young man is in, a red shirt could be a life or death decision.

 

When my younger brother was in high school he would get into arguments with my mother over a pair of red vans he brought home. She refused to let him wear those shoes outside of our neighborhood for fear that the shoes coupled with a white tee could have him pegged as a gang member. She even went so far as to hide them in my room. I use to think my mother was being paranoid, but now that I work with teens I know how important their personal style can affect their lives. It’s not fair, but  a simple pair of non-prescription eye glasses, or a tattoo removal, can transform a young man from Mara Salvatrucha to Kid Cudi. I’ve heard way too many horror stories about men who only looked like gang members and fell victim to suspected gang affiliations. 

 

 

 

Dozens of Los Angeles gangs have been slapped with injunctions. In certain neighborhoods, if a group of young black or brown kids congregate together and look anything like your stereotypical Piru Blood or MS13,  you can be sure they will be antagonized by LAPD. 

 

Now that some of these kids, gang-affiliated or not, are switching from plain white tees to knock off skinny jeans and borrowing their sister’s pants, or digging into their mama’s old wardrobe – because you know colorful pants were hot in the late 70s/early 8os – I’m down for the skinny jean revolution! 

 

I rather my 14-year-old cousin, or any of the boys I’ve grown to love at the day job, look like The Cool Kids instead of Tookie Williams before he started writing children’s books and meeting up with Farrakhan.  

Tags: Gang Injunctions, LAPD, Los Angeles Gangs, N.W.A., Skinny Jeans, The Cool Kids