Obama is against the low-slung trousers look

Here's one bit of coverage you might have missed in the past couple of days: an interview with MTV in which Obama responds to the question of whether there should be dress codes about saggy trousers.

This is particularly interesting to me because:

(1) I hate this look on boys and so the world's new black role model, the leader of the free world, etc shores up my own opinion, so I don't feel quite so not-down-with-the-kids.

(2) It demonstrates Obama's thoughtfulness on what we should and should focus on attention on and

(3) Is unquestionably the most "black" I've seen him in an interview. It shows just how cool he is, complementing the interviewer's "tight" dreads and using lingo that as a white woman I just could never use without appearing unredeemably uncool.

Comments

[Centuries]

You should be very afraid of this man. It is not a laughing matter. Yes, black is a way of acting in America. Obama grew up in Indonesia, however. He thinks he has fooled the American black public.

[Babbette]

My moment of low slung jeans horror was when a woman knelt in front of me at Mass and I was subjected to 4 inches of something I didn't want to see so I moved. I'll be glad when this jailhouse fashion is passe'. Then all I'll have to be annoyed about are the teens and pre-teens dressed like streetwalkers.

[broomstix of kensal rise]

It's official then: buttcrack theater is dead. Being subjected to other people's cheap knickers is so uncool - what are they thinking!

re Obama interview,'Mummy'.Just so you know,when he uses the word 'tight',he's referring to the interviewer's general appearance,as in 'you look good'.He isn't commenting on the neat,interwoven tightness or otherwise of the bloke's dreads.Please.

[Cece]

Am laughing a lot at the idea that the lipstick on a pig thing is sexist! Someone clearly has no idea what the saying means. The pig in this case is the Republican policies - not a woman! And it means what it says, you can put lipstick on a pig (of either gender) and it is still self-evidently a pig. It is, as someone else pointed out, the same meaning as you can't polish a turd.

[Hol]

Baggy trousers are fine, but if you can see half your underwear sticking out then pull them up and invest in a belt.

As for a pig in lipstick -I personally take it as a compliment. You can put lipstick on a pig but you can't make it look like a woman for we are far, far more than just our lipstick ;o) At any rate, the right wing attempt to interpret it as an insult to Palin was laughable. Read in proper context in its original paragraph it was very obviously directed at policy and not a person.

[kaz]

Ya'll tell yo' white kids to pull em up. It don look good on them! If we black, we 'act' black.

[Akosua]

Black is NOT a way of acting as some people like to think. It is only a skin colour, the behaviour stems from upbringing, level of education etc. You can have a black & white person who have more in common with each other than with another person of the same race. I thought intelligent people & leaders read this paper, I hope to God I am wrong from some of the responses here.

[LM]

My biggest regret of the year, actually, Jarrad, is that I couldn't go & hear Obama when he came to Seattle before the primary (unheard of - we moved our primary up to February & suddenly got attention from all the major players, having been completely ignored in the past). We were all set to attend, then the child got a tummy bug & spent the day throwing up. Of course, we'll remind her of it again as she grows up.

I don't know that they've had 100s of 1000s of people coming out for rallies in past elections here - Obama is really a new phenomenon.

As for the "hard-working families" phrase, here in the US, it's really a synonym for "blue collar working families"; they tend to say "middle class" when they mean professional people (which, as Jane2 points out, is ridiculous because there are very few families that are not hard-working).

[Jarrad]

I suspect that some nameless speechwriting idiot came up with the phrase "Hard Working Families" because it covers so many bases - 1. We support the family unit and therefore show our morals, 2. We're not just going to give money away to wasters living their lives on the dole at the expense of others.

Bearing in mind the number of times that Brown has used this phrase and looking at the client state of non-hard working families he and his cohort have created, it makes my blood boil every time I hear it.

But then again, he is just a dour, unimaginative robot who can do nothing but churn out his dour, unimaginative mantras. "I'm getting on with the job", "We have made the right decision" (never any evidence provided).

I said to a friend of mine some weeks ago when Obama held a rally in St Louis with hundreds of thousands attending....can you imagine that many people attending a political rally in this country?

If we had only one MP with the oratorial skills of the President-Elect we'd be a hell of a lot better off.

I'm not holding my breath.

[Sho]

lol @ LM.

I've never heard the expression - but then I've been more out of Yorkshire than in it.

[Jane2]

Thanks, LM, for the insight into use of term over there. G Brown has been using it for longer, I think. He uses it so often that it has lost all meaning, and become boring. A hammer-blow to the brain, a shorthand term for people he feels he would like to be seen supporting, and whom he would like to support him.

It also seems patronising, to me.
Virtually all families are hard-working, you have to be.

At one time, I held down three part-time jobs, (so I could maximise income without having to pay for childcare).

Anyway, back to "hard-working families". I think that "hard-working pensioners" should be given a look-in. All around me I see people over pensionable age having to carry on working because their savings have been decimated or wiped out by the consequences of Brown and Blair's eleven years in power.

The US has a simlar problem, I believe, an aging population without adequate retirement provision.

[LM]

Jane2 -

"Hard-working families" has been one of the Dems' mantras all year. Hillary used it first and Obama appropriated it when he realised he needed to get/keep her supporters on board.

[LM]

Oh, come on Sho. Of course they won't notice in Germany, but I remember numerous people, growing up, who'd say "(s)he's being right Yorkshire about it" (usually meaning stubborn as a mule or more direct than even most Yorkshire folks have the reputation of being).

[Sho]

Like Yorkshire?

Oh I'm all over that! I'm going to Act Yorkshire all week and see if anyone notices.
:-D

[Jane2]

Cool, not-cool, intelligent, persuasive....I had high hopes of all these things from President-elect Obama, until yesterday. I heard a clip from his first press post-election press conference, in which he used the dread phrase: "Hard-working families".

Please, please, don't let him start copying Gordon Brown. Please.

(Footnote)
Thank you , The Times team who produced the excellent insert on Obama this week, the day after the election. I was delighted to have the full copy of the acceptance speech to read, and the article about Michelle was very interesting and informative. Erica Wagner's interview with Maya Angelou made me cry.

[LM]

I just want to go back to a comment that was made earlier on this thread, about how "black is a skin colour not a way of acting". Depends on where you live. In the US, "black" definitely is a way of acting/talking that's its own dialect/mannerisms etc. Just like "Yorkshire" in that sense.

[Lucy (without kids. Yet)]

'People seem unaware that the low slung look was originally created by kids wanting to look tough by copying jail inmates who had their belts taken away hence the drooping pants
it is a sad comment on black youth that kids wanted to be 'cool' in imitation/identification with criminals' - Bill.

- I don't know if Bill is wrong here, but I heard something different. Because boys in poor and/or violent areas often wore their brothers' cast-off clothes, a baggy pair of trousers acted as phsyical back-up to the threat 'my brother's bigger than yours!'

[Sally Says]

I think the only reason people got upset when Obama made the pig in lipstick remark was because he did so very soon after Sarah Palin called herself (and all other hockey mothers) a "pitbull in lipstick". There's nothing misogynistic about the expression.

[Gipsy]

Me too Kate. Women put on lipstick and they're more desirable - that is, a woman, plus lipstick, a desirable woman. A pig could put lipstick on but it wouldn't be desirable - that is pig, plus lipstick, a pig with lipstick on. Presumably there would be an exactly the same analogy using something that a man puts on to make themselves desirable, except that lets face it, there's not really anything a man can put on to make themselves more desirable. It just doesn't have the same ring to it - a man who has shaved, clipped nose hairs and shampooed out the dandruff is more desirable for sure. And a pig who has shaved, clipped nose hairs and shampooed is a pig who has shaved, clipped nose hairs and shampooed. Hmmm definitely not going to take off that one.

Whimsey I too applaud the confrontation of sexism particularly where it is blatant. But I don't think you should waste emotionally energy over this, as no-one is implying that the pig is women, and there's nothing in the phrase to suggest that it is calling women pigs. If it was then I'm quite sure that there'd have been more of an outcry from feminists in particular when John McCain used it in reference to Hilary Clinton don't you think? And the furore this time - it wasn't the feminists behind it but Republicans. Doesn't that at least suggest to you that it isn't saying that women are pigs?

[Kate]

Whimsey, I'd line to introduce myself as one woman who wasn't offended by the pig/lipstick comment. It wasn't sexist, it was just a more family friendly way of saying you can't polish a turd.

[L]

It's about trying to mask something ugly to make it look better. It is not inherently sexist. Lots of common expessions do not translate. For example, don't ever use "smoke a fag" or aks to "bum a fag" in the US.

[dot king]

A president who can easily and naturally code-switch all the better to talk to his audience(s)? Wow - this really IS a first.
Don't forget this man is a lawyer, a teacher, a politician - therefore to a great extent, an actor too - perfectly normal that he can adjust his language - really great that he does.

[ALD]

Whimsy, I admire you for trying to speak out against what you believe is a sexist remark but I really have to laugh a bit here. You obviously aren't familiar with the phrase or what it means. It has nothing to do with women or how they look, it's about dressing something undesirable up to make it appear better than it really is -- i.e. lipstick on a pig. When Obama said this he was referring to McCain's policies, not Sarah Palin, nor any other person. He was using a well known saying to essentially say that McCain was proposing the same old stuff, just in a different manner of speaking. It's really nothing to get riled up about, and I am one of the staunchest, most outspoken feminists you'll find.

Also, I agree wholeheartedly with Gavin. How are we meant to get past racial stereotyping when we say things like 'acting black'?!

[Whimsey]

How can the comment be anything other than sexist in a culture in which the predominant users of lipstick are female??

It's the cruelty of the jibe I deplore. Sneering at women for being ugly (a pig), and mocking them for trying to make themselves sexually attractive by putting lipstick on.