It's hip to walk around with a pacifier

Health officials, parents and educators are not amused by teen soother fad

Publication title: Edmonton Journal
Pages: C6
Section: LIFE
Publication date: Dec 8, 1992
ProQuest document ID: 251897062
Copyright: (Copyright The Edmonton Journal)
Author: DENNIS ROMERO Knight Ridder Newspapers

The world of street trends operates on a rule of contraposition.

"Fat" means "cool," "dope" means "hip," and teenage rappers Kris Kross wear their baggy Gap jeans backwards. Now, from this teen world normally associated with adult-envy comes the ultimate symbol of immaturity: the pacifier.

Inner-city teens have been spotted sporting small, plastic pacifiers around their necks. Some even suck on their roped pacifiers - available for $1 to $4 streetside and in boutiques in New York, Philadelphia and Washington - as a kind of pose.

Health officials, educators and parents are not amused.

Elaine Tyrrell, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission, wasn't yet sure whether she would call the colorful, hard plastic items pacifiers or jewelry. But, she noted, it is illegal to produce real pacifiers with ropes, ribbons or necklaces attached because the items can then choke babies.

Last year, in fact, the commission begat the voluntary recall of nearly 6,000 real pacifiers with beaded and chain necklaces attached. The items were apparently intended as fashion, but the commission feared they may have been purchased for babies.

Ellen Savitz, acting principal at Philadelphia's High School for Creative and Performing Arts, said her students "don't seem to be sucking on them -thank God. They're purely decorative."

Christopher Swinson, a 17-year-old senior at the school, says his parents made him stop wearing his pacifier because they felt it unbefitting a young man. "My father got mad at me," he said.

The look has been traced back to the first all-night dance parties known as "raves," at the turn of the decade in London. The scene is still marked by a mixture of childhood and psychedelia, where Mickey Mouse T-shirts harken innocence, yet symbolize LSD and where "Cat in the Hat" top hats are sported by Los Angeles ravers high on designer drug MDMA. Sucking on lollipops is in vogue at raves from Philadelphia to San Diego.

Like many trends that start at street level, the pacifier saga has been amplified by popular culture. Flavor Flav, sidekick rapper for Public Enemy, has in the past added the pacifier to his toyish repertoire of neck-based jewelry that includes his trademark clock (which, to some, symbolizes the making of money). Members of condom-crazed female rap group TLC are also known to sport a pacifier occasionally. And, of course, there was Boyz N The Hood, which featured a secondary, pacifier-sucking character who whizzed around in a wheelchair.

A few of the students who poured out of the performing arts school after a recent day of instruction paused to recount the origin of their fever for the flavor of a pacifier. And their inspiration wasn't music or movies, but peers.

"A lot of my girlfriends were wearing them," says 16-year-old Shari Franklin, a pacifier proponent. "Now I buy them for my other girlfriends for Christmas."

But not unlike others at the school who flat-out called the trend "stupid," this baggy-pants-wearing 11th grader has her limits.

"I won't suck on it, because I think that's tasteless," she says.

Credit: KNIGHT RIDDER