Looking Bad : Some Teens May Dress Like Gangbangers, but Their Message Is Peace

It’s after school, and Ben Rooney, 15, and some of the boys from the Silver Lake hood are gathered at a corner talking politics, peace and power. The state of the world is weighing heavy on their minds.

But to passersby, the guys don’t look like the socially conscious fellows they really are. They don’t look like the architects and attorneys they plan to be.

To outsiders, they look threatening. Like gangbangers.

But if you look closely, you see they have taken the gang look--the saggy pants, baggy flannel shirts and baseball caps--and turned it inside out.

Instead of the black, blue and red worn by Crips and Bloods, they wear bold colors based on African tribal flags. Instead of the Raiders and Kings insignia, they wear emblems of college teams like the Michigan Wolverines or baseball caps slashed with a huge “X” (as in Malcolm).

And their T-shirts often carry in-your-face slogans: “Stop the Violence,” “Peace in the Hood” and “By Any Means Necessary.”

Peace in the hood?

Yeah, these guys want to look tough, rebellious and way cool. But they also want to send a message: They like the gang look but not gang life. Through what they call “dangerous dressing,” they say they’re telling other teens to stop killing each other and come together.

“It’s clothing without prejudice,” says Jamie Munson, 15, an Asian-American sophomore at Marshall High. “It’s about being Asian, black, white or Hispanic and being united and not fighting with each other. Stopping the violence that’s out there.”

If their way of dressing is threatening to some, that’s fine with them. They like shaking people up. It’s part of the message.

“My parents think I dress funny,” says Rooney, also a Marshall sophomore. “And a lot of times people say to me, ‘You are white and you dress like that. Why?’

“I’m claiming my identity,” Rooney says. “I’m into anti-gang thinking. . . . I know a lot of black people, and I identify with them. I have a lot of Hispanic and Asian friends.”

Rooney says his generation is “very conscious of death” because of gang violence, drugs and AIDS. “Through our clothing we’re promoting peace and nonviolence so we can have a chance at life.”

Teens use gang styles to gain a sense of power, says UC Davis professor Susan Kaiser, author of “Social Psychology of Clothing.” Teen-agers don’t have real power and try to get it by mimicking power dressers they admire, she says. “They have been seduced by the looks of gangsters, counterculture heroes and the like.”

Kaiser, an associate professor of textiles and clothing, says, “Kids have a tendency of borrowing one concept of clothing and putting it into another. It’s the same principle as a man in a business suit,” she says.

Dangerous dressing is the ‘90s form of teen rebellion, adds USC psychologist Barbara Cadow, who counsels adolescents and teens. “What and how they wear clothes has a huge effect.”

Cadow says teens have always used clothing to send messages of rebellion--from ‘50s rockers to ‘60s hippies to ‘70s punks.

But in recent years, dressing to rebel has become more dangerous--as gangs have emerged and, with them, color codes and so-called “gang uniforms.”

Now, students have to watch what they wear, to keep from sending the wrong signals to gang members and to keep from attracting the attention of school officials and security guards who have come to scrutinize the way kids dress.

From the inner city to the suburbs, more teens are striking out against both sides: They are taking what they think is cool about gang clothes--often to the discomfort of their parents and other adults. But they also are wearing anti-gang labels or unity colors to tell other teens they’re sick of the fighting.

“We want people to get it,” says Juanita Payne, 16, an African-American student at John Muir High in Pasadena. “There are no color barriers. We all need to work together, especially now, so we don’t keep on killing each other.”

Through the clothes, “We’re saying, ‘We’re here. We’re proud,’ ” says Everett Green, 17, a Marshall High senior.

Like many students, Green, who is African-American, wears a lot of clothing by Cross Colours, a label that pioneered the use of anti-gang messages and a rainbow of unity colors in teen clothing.

Green says he usually pairs Cross Colours wear with a T-shirt of Malcolm X. “I think Malcolm had to have that philosophy of ‘by any means necessary’ back then. It wouldn’t work today because I think more young black men and women need to go into business and pursue economic pursuits in order to gain power,” he says.

Still, Green and many of his friends--of all races--embrace the “X” on baseball caps and Malcolm’s image on T-shirts and other kinds of clothing.

“I want to become a lawyer and, maybe when I’m older, open my own law firm,” Green says. “But right now I want to continue to express myself, find myself, and if that means dressing in a radical way, then that’s what I have to do. I think when you get older, you get less radical.”

“Sometimes I like to sag my pants and wear an extra large T-shirt and a flannel shirt over that,” says Munson, who wants to become an architect.

He says that many adults find his appearance menacing, especially while he and his friends are walking home from school or hanging out at a mall.

“Recently, at the mall, me and my friends were dressed (gang-style) and a couple of old ladies were staring at us and probably wondering, ‘Why are they wearing those clothes?’ ” Munson says. “I think they were scared of us.”

Adds his friend, Green: “I feel that the way we dress can be dangerous sometimes. Like when I ride the bus, the elderly people stare at you and they seem kind of frightened by the T-shirts and low, baggy pants, the heavy work shoes.

“At businesses, people kind of take a double look at you. They’re thinking, ‘There’s another hoodlum. I hope he doesn’t want my purse.’ I mean I’ve seen women clutch their purses.

“If someone sees you as a gangbanger, then that’s all they are going to see. I could tell them I’m not a gangbanger, but that’s all they are going to see, so I still dress the way I want to dress.

“My mom is always telling me to buy some regular pants that look fitted, not baggy,” he says. “But I tell her we wear everything baggy, two to four sizes bigger,” because that’s the style.

Rooney says mall security guards have stopped him twice in recent weeks, but both times his mother showed up “and everything was fine.”

He says his parents don’t fully understand why he wears the clothes he does. His friends relate similar stories, adding they don’t want them to know, either.

“It would be like letting a secret out,” says Walter Hicks, 16. He says at school there are various cliques: students who wear Cross Colours, gangsters, dancers or hip-hoppers and everyone in between.

“A lot of times the clothes we wear is just to be original. It’s being cool, but also being socially aware,” says Hicks, who has a Malcolm X T-shirt and cap.

Wearing gang styles to send an anti-gang message may confuse adults, but not the teens who wear them, says Ross Goldstein, a San Francisco psychologist and marketing consultant.

To kids, a gang member is not some dangerous, abstract stereotype. They know gang members, go to school with them.

“Insiders--the teen-agers--know gang members as real people,” Goldstein says. “That’s why they are more willing to experiment with some of their styles.

“Outsiders (adults) always stereotype insiders, and they reach conclusions and paint these pictures that don’t allow for individual differences.”

The kids know better, Goldstein says. They are aware that gang members are not all bad.

Marshall High’s Green agrees.

“In junior high school, we knew guys in gangs,” he says, “hung out with them because they were regular, nice people, not hard-core yet. That’s when we started to borrow the style of the way they dressed.”

“Kids have been looking for something that just didn’t mean fashion,” says Fred Williams, an ex-Crip and director of Common Ground, a youth organization. “With clothing out there like Cross Colours, they are making a statement that says, ‘I am neutral,’ because the colors are so profound that nobody can claim them. Kids are under so much pressure on the outside with colors.

“If kids aren’t able to express themselves this way--through dress and clothing--they will find another outlet,” Williams says. “Drugs, crime, gangs and violence. Expression through clothing is the least harmful mode of rebellion.

“Through the medium of clothes, teens have become mediators.”