“Brothers should pull up their pants…You’re walking by your mother, your grandmother, and your underwear is showing…What’s wrong [up] with that?” reflected Barack Obama in an interview back in 2008. In this essay, I have tried to answer that fundamental question: What’s up with sagging pants? Despite all the negative connotations associated with it, teenagers still continue to sag their pants. Contemporary scholarly conversation situates notions of rebellion and articulation of individual identity as the principle reason why teenagers wear sagging pants. However, a close reading of ethnographic data collected by Baxter and Marina, as well as first-hand views of those who sag their pants, reveals that individuals sag their pants for no particular
