Have you ever been brave enough to waddle from one bathroom stall to the next in order to find toilet paper? Your pants are down to your knees as you struggle to make it before someone opens the bathroom door. Many boys go through a similar struggle daily. However, in their case, they’re not out of toilet paper, they’re just sagging (wearing their pants below their waist). Yes, many boys sag around school, adopting a ridiculous waddle. I’ve always thought sagging looked ridiculous and unflattering, but it wasn’t until freshman year that I also realized how impractical it is.

I was speeding down the halls to get to science class on time. As I reached the stairs in the science building, I saw a classmate of mine moving at a snail’s pace trying to make it down the stairs in his extremely low-rise jeans. As I began to run faster, I watched as he, too, tried to pick up his speed, and in doing so, he moved his legs further apart than his “stylish” pants would allow. He began to trip, skidding down a few steps, pantsing himself in the process. He managed to catch himself at the bottom of the stairs once his pants reached his ankles. Standing there bright red, with his pants on the ground, he tried to pull his pants back up to his knees with as much dignity as he could muster. Luckily he was wearing gym shorts underneath his pants, a popular fad that has gone hand in hand with sagging, which I now understand.

He could have gotten to class on time, and easily avoided embarrassment if he had not sagged. Why even go through this ridiculous hassle in the first place? A little sag is completely fine, attractive even, but if you’re at the point where you are having difficulty walking, than you no longer look cool, you look like you don’t know how to buy jeans that fit properly. Learning to dress yourself is a life skill we acquire early on, did you never learn how to pull up your pants? If not, the kindergarten curriculum really needs to step up their game. Girls don’t want to see what kind of underwear or gym shorts you are wearing underneath your jeans.

Thankfully some guys try to hide whatever they are wearing underneath their low jeans by wearing extremely large shirts. However, while I appreciate the effort that they are making to cover up their butt, now they just look extremely disproportional. The style makes them look like they have the longest torso known to man, and the smallest legs.

While there are many different claims as to how sagging started, the one most sites, including the Bronx Journal, claim to be true, is that sagging originated in prison. I’ve heard many people say that an inmate would sag his uniform to signify he was sexually available. However, many websites say that this is not true. Sagging did start in prison, but it started because inmates were not given belts. Prisoners used to use belts to commit suicide, so prisons stopped administering them.

The fact that people who can be trusted with belts are sagging is a mystery to me. They took a punishment, and turned it into a horrible fashion statement. I think most people would appreciate it if guys pulled up their pants. In fact, I think if they wore their pants closer to their hips, they might even find that the simple things in life, like walking, are a lot easier than they seem.

Hopefully in twenty years, these notorious extreme saggers will look at past pictures of themselves and wonder, “What was I thinking?” Similar to how men nowadays look at pictures of themselves with mullets and wonder why they ever thought they looked cool.