Dress code
A dress code is a rule about what people should wear. Many times these rules are obvious: they do not need to be written. For example, when walking around a city or going to work one needs to have appropriate clothes. These can change depending on different countries and cultures. At other times a dress code can be a written rule: this can happen for important events. Some private places might also have a dress code that people need to follow to be allowed in - for example churches and nightclubs“Ugh, Dress Codes!” The title of one of 15-year-old Izzy Label's SPARK Movement blog posts encapsulates what I’ve heard so many girls say they feel about their middle and high school dress codes.
Izzy wrote her blog after years of frustration, beginning in early middle school when she began to notice girls’ bodies become objects of adult interest and surveillance. She honed her critique as part of SPARK Movement, an inter generational girl-fueled activist project I co-founded in 2010. In her central Maine high school, Izzy and her friend Hannah formed the school’s first-ever Feminist Club. On the top of their list was a challenge to the terms of a dress code that penalized girls for wearing shorts and spaghetti-strap tops. After reasoned conversation with administrators failed, club members quietly posted dozens of 8.5 x 11″ sheets of white paper with large black print on school bulletin boards: “Instead of publicly shaming girls for wearing shorts on an 80-degree day, you should teach teachers and male students to not overly sexual a normal body part to the point where they apparently can’t function in daily life.”
Izzy is now a first-year college student, but just this spring another Maine girl, 6th grader Molly Neuter, made national news for challenging her school’s dress code. Like so many before her, she joined a coalition of girls across the country using the Twitter hashtag #contradistinction. Reading her story, two things strike me: This issue is not going away and most adults don’t see the gift the issue offers.
Protests against dress codes get to the very heart of what it means to be an adolescent girl. It’s more than a generational claim to personal identity. Dress codes are a stand-in for all the ways girls feel objectified, serialized, unheard, treated as second-class citizens by adults in authority — all the sexist, racist, classist, homophobic hostilities they experience. When girls push back on dress codes they are demanding to be heard, seen, and respected. This means it’s a moment primed for interdenominational engagement and education.
But too often, only two types of adults appear: administrators under fire for defending their schools’ policies and moms complaining about the shaming their daughters have endured or the school days they’ve missed for dress code violations. Where are the teachers who see the possibility for meaningful conversations about the development of institutional policies, about freedom of speech and choice, about democracy? How about those who see the opportunity to encourage critical thinking about cultural differences or the chance to examine the impact of media and pop culture on gender identity or the influence of rampant marketing and consumerism?
In response to this vacuum of adult engagement, girls are having these conversations without us. Most aren’t asking schools to eliminate dress codes altogether. They simply want policies that are relevant to their lives, policies that account for changes in clothing styles, that value identity development, gender expression, and cultural diversity. And they want and expect to be consulted.
They also say they want policies that are consistent and fairly applied. One study from the Kiwanis Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, for example, indicates teachers are more likely to discipline girls of color for minor offenses like dress code policy violations and are more likely to give them harsher punishments. Dress code policies can become just another example of a hostile school experience for girls of color, for trans girls, for girls living in poverty. Teachers who have not addressed their own unconscious biases (e.g., their tendency to judge a girl’s character by how she dresses), who have not confronted their internalized sexism or racism, who struggle with students who challenge the gender binary, cannot apply dress codes fairly. The best way to ensure a policy is applied fairly is diversity and bias prevention training for teachers and administrators.
It also helps to spend some time with students who have struggled with school dress codes and who think critically about bias, prejudice, and injustice. Here are a few things I’ve learned from listening to what girls say that make for a good dress code policy:
School dress-code controversies have been trending on the web in recent months, fanning a controversy over whether schools are enforcing the rules in ways that discriminate against girls.
In one of the latest episodes, a viral video initially meant to instruct students on the dress-code policy at Marcus High School in Flower Mound, Texas, drew intense criticism last month for depicting only girls as rule violators. In St. Louis, Orville High School’s principal is captured on video apologizing to parents after telling female students they should not show off their bodies for fear of “distracting” male classmates. And a Roman Catholic school in New Orleans came into the internet spotlight when a 6th grader was forced to leave the classroom, in tears, for having braided hair extensions, which were against the school’s hair policy.
Schools with strict dress codes often claim that such regulations prevent in-class distractions, create a workplace-like environment, reduce pressures based on socioeconomic status, and deter gang activity. However, in an age of #Me Too and easy internet access, controversy is increasingly cropping up over whether excluding students from the classroom for violating dress codes is worthwhile, and whether such rules are disproportionately enforced against girls, especially those of color.
