Feline Warrior

There are those low-hangin’ pants and shorts. The rubber slip-on sandals worn with socks. The hunched over-head-down posture. All this prison-inspired stuff. But don’t call yet! I have discovered Prison Issue sneakers from Vans.

Their full name is Prison Issue #23 and are available in a wide range of colors and sizes. You may purchase these snappy little dog-warmers from the official Vans web site for $45 (+ s&h) or from Urban Outfitters for $48 (+ s&h).

On the Urban Outfitters page, it says, Made for real-live prisoners in California prisons, Vans created these as laceless wonders with Velcro straps instead - because with all that time on lockdown, there’s no telling what kind of trouble you could get yourself into with a set of shoelaces. Rubber-capped toes, canvas uppers, triple-closures and classic Vans style at the crisscross soles. Logo tag at the ankle and heel, because a number just seems so impersonal.

Now, let’s pause for a moment here. In fact, I encourage you to take a breath, look about your surroundings, and think about the last time you were on lockdown. (And in case you have been on lockdown, I am not making fun of it - read on.) You haven’t ever been on lockdown, you say? Perhaps you are a parent and are thinking something like, “Why in the hell would my kids need shoes that are perfect for lockdown?!” or, “Why in the hell would my kids need shoes that were made for prisoners?!” The answer is simple: They shouldn’t.

I did a quick Google search on prison clothes popular with youth and came up with a few articles, and will share a snippet of one with you here. This is from Znet: Youth Watch, World news involving youth. Youth Watch is just one of many sections of Znet, A community of people committed to social change.

The article of note, Zero Tolerance: Youth and the politics of domestic materialization, by Henry A. Giroux, points to a New York Times article by Guy Trebay that focuses on “jailhouse chic” as the latest in youth fashion. Surrendering any attempt at socially responsible analysis, Trebay reports that the reason so many teens are turning prison garb into a fashion statement is that an unprecedented number of youths are incarcerated in the United States. When they get released, “they take part of that culture with them.”

This makes sense a bit, but then you look at who wears this stuff, and you realize there are no cultural boundaries to prison chic. Ah, finally, the youth of America have come together: rich kids, poor kids, white kids, kids of color, boys, girls, straight, gay, bisexual, and on and on… this stuff is being worn by kids in all of these categories. I do think that it began with kids at the lower end of the economic scale, and of those, kids of color - one need only look to national statistics to find out to which communities jailed youth were being released. Add to that the popularity of rap, which has also reached across once uncrossable zones, and you have prison fashions for everyone. Yay.

When I pose the question, Why are kids who aren’t in prison and who have never been in prison wearing prison garb? I am not resting my gaze upon the rich white kids, or the rich black kids, or any kids in particular. Truly, I am looking across the vast horizon of all youth, and wondering what the hell is going on.

I’ll admit it, in case it hasn’t become fairly obvious along the way: I’m no spring kitten. Perhaps my choice to not have children has given me an opportunity to maintain more of my own childlike qualities (because I didn’t have to get all grown up and such in order to make another dinky person suitable for society) - but this is just a theory and isn’t really the topic at hand. I digress…

The point here is that when I was a youth, say 12-18, there were different fashions that adults didn’t get. My mom was pretty strict, so I didn’t even get to wear most of them until she moved out when I was around 16. (And then the dams broke, oh, yes indeed!) But I was part of that punk era, when mohawks really were alarming, as were bright colors of hair (blue, stop-sign red, purple, etc.). Safety pins took the place of earrings and leather jackets were metal-studded; some wore that creepy face-paling white makeup and dark, heavy black eye makeup. And I participated in that, to one degree or another.

So today I am going to think about that time, the punk era, and compare it with today’s time, the prison chic era, and try to see if I have become one of those adults who just don’t get it. Because honestly, right now, I am thinking that while we all looked really weird and admittedly (and intentionally) scary, we weren’t emulating penitentiary inmates.

Here’s the part where I (try to) make it clear that I am not making light of being on lockdown, or in a prison (past, present, or future): Maybe for some folks, prison feels somehow safer than the outside world. My life has not been such that I can really understand that, or even try to paint a picture of it. But for some, it’s home, there is structure, they can be a big fish in a relatively little pond - something. Yet life in prison is nothing to sneeze at - it’s not for the faint-hearted.

I speak from second-hand experience. Way back when, there was a beau who was in California State Prison, LA, and while he and I did not get to speak by phone often, there was a man who phoned on the boyfriend’s behalf: Michael said to say he love you. Bring cigarettes next time. Please. So that boyfriend told me what it was like, and frankly, it sounded like he got a good deal when he made friends with that guy, who was, apparently, quite a bit larger than my not-so-big boyfriend.

Prison isn’t cool. That’s the damn point. Committing crimes isn’t cool. Being a gangsta thug isn’t cool. I mean, the style might be cool, but the lifestyle is not.

Is wearing a pair of Prison Issue #23 Vans indicative of anything more than participating in a fad? Maybe not. But at the very least, it concerns me when anything about prison is cool - because doing whatever one might do to get there is not cool.

If you see smoke coming from over here, it’s my brain working hard on this one.