Dress Codes

In the past month or so, the annual pre-summer debate as to what young people should wear to school has once again become a topic for the mainstream press. It is a discussion that by my memory is at least fifty years old.

The school that I went to had a very clear dress code for the girls. In grades one through seven girls had to wear a grey jumper over a white blouse. They had a choice as to whether or not they wore a blue sweater with gold trim or a blazer with the same trim. In high school they had to wear a grey pleated skirt, a white blouse and either the blue sweater or the blazer. The school board argued that by having a dress code, it meant that the girls would not have to compete with each other and that no one would know which child came from a rich or poor family. Of courses, families with less money could only afford one skirt and other families could afford two. Which meant that some girls could get their jumpers or skirts dry-cleaned through the school year. Wearing the same skirt everyday for three and half months could make the grey jumper or skirt look tired to say the least. We always knew who came from which families if for no other reason than only some families could afford the far more expensive blazer. The girls hated it. The guys didn't care.

The guys were not allowed to wear blue jeans but except for one year we never really had a dress code. Was it unfair - of course. Was it sexist? Without a doubt. Did the school board ever say that the young women had to wear a uniform so that they would not distract the guys? No. I am not sure if they even thought about it or if they had, that they would have had the courage to talk about it. The dress code in our little town had far more to do with issues of class and an attempt to stop the young people from becoming either James Dean or Marlon Brando (in the Wild Ones) than stopping young people from thinking about sex. As far as I can remember, those white blouses did nothing to stop the guys from thinking about sex.

Jumping ahead to 2015, the issue as to what female students can and should wear to school is far more about sexuality than the debates of when I was a teen. The argument from young women and those who have the ability to see the story from only one side is that if a female student is wearing something that a male student finds provocative or stimulating - that is his problem; that the male needs to his redirect those thoughts to something less distracting.

I would agree completely that is a male only problem only if the two following statements are true: (1) that anyone and everyone can turn off the mass media programming that all young men are exposed to that shows them what is sexually stimulating (give me a group of males for six years starting when they are in grade four and ensure that they are only exposed to the media I provide and I could make the majority of those males be obsessed with noses!) and (2) give assurance that no young female ever knowingly wears anything to school that is provocative because it is provocative. To suggest that it is only the males that have a problem is to ignore the reality of socialization and of biology.

None of which is to say that what a women wears ever gives a male permission to stare, make comments or unwanted advances. Never. What a woman is wearing should never be an excuse for males acting badly. The young women are right - guys need to grow up and get past this stuff. But it would be useful if some of the women who are placing all of the responsibility on the men would accept that what they wear can be distracting and that school might not be the best place for anyone to be distracted.

So in the next ten or so days, another principal (most likely a male one) will be afflicted with foot-in-the-mouth  disease and say something stupid, another administrator will over-react because a strap is showing ( bra straps are far less interesting or distracting in 2015 than they were in 1965) and students will rightly be angry that they are not allowed to wear what they want, when they want. It is an age old conflict - old fogies get to try and enforce standards that worked when they were young, and young people get to be angry about it.

We live in a post-modernist age. The old rules as to how people need to behave don't seem to apply anymore. I am not sure what the answer is, but I am reasonable sure that blaming half of the population for the problem is guaranteed not to be the solution.  As a matter of fact, I think we have already tried that. It didn't work out very well.