At the beginning of April, I wrote a blog about some of the stupid laws around the world. Along a similar theme, I couldn’t resist the following story on the BBC website. It seems that the Mayor of Delcambre, Louisiana is set to ban saggy trousers on the grounds that they constitute indecent exposure.

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t get the whole underpants above the trouser thing. I think it just makes people look like a skinny retard, who can’t work out how to use a belt. I have to fight the urge to just walk over and pull them up! But indecent exposure? Illegal? That is dangerously skirting third-world territory. I remember the bad old days of Africa, when Mugabe wasn’t the only nut-job dictator on the continent. Banda of Malawi banned women from wearing trousers and men from wearing beards. Beards were also banned by Mobuto Sese Seko of Zaire, as were neckties – on the grounds that tie-wearing beardies were more likely to be anti-government intellectuals.

Is this really the face that Louisiana wants to present to the wider world?

© stevedavey.com

This entry was posted on Friday, June 15th, 2007 at 2:27 pm and is filed under Africa travel, Steve projects, US travel, weirdness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.