Tag Archives: dress codes

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Dress Coda

I suppose it’s time for a confession, but I have to be covert about it; devious -labyrinthine, to the extent that my disclosure may fly in the face of current trends. I may be incorrectly accused of retrograde thinking -or, horrors, of prejudice. Discrimination.

Well, perhaps there is a soupçon of babbling admixed in my preference, but only in my desire to avoid the frequent tendency to judge in advance, or on insufficient, and perhaps even faulty evidence. There comes a time when freedom from must be protected against freedom to. Freedom should not be interpreted as license; I very much doubt that many of us would push for the freedom, say, to drive on the wrong side of the road. Some freedoms, surely, are worthier of advocacy than others.

And in some venues, freedom may have to yield a little space to fairness and justice. Sometimes freedom simply occupies a space that others cannot occupy -even if they wanted to. I’m referring, of course, to that flagship of fashion: the school. Inhabited as it is by those who are still dependent on group-think, still on their headlong dash for identity and, let’s face it, peer approval, it is a cauldron for fashion. A furnace of innovation where nuance triumphs, and failure to adhere to unspoken rules may result in isolation or exile.

The rules often include behavioural expectations, quirks of special language, and dress codes. It is what groups of young humans do; it is part of growing up, and it is expected that they will stretch boundaries and rebel at what they consider to be arbitrary and unnecessary restrictions. It may be frustrating for those of us who have passed unscathed through the tumult of that phase of youth, but not all are so lucky.

Fashions, for example, may be not only capricious, but also expensive luxuries that some parents either cannot, or choose not to afford, leaving the child in a quandary. Being accepted -welcomed- into a group may be jeopardized. Nobody wants to be ostracized; few feel comfortable in being regarded as different.

I was interested therefore, in an article in the Conversation that addressed the problem but approached it from a different perspective: https://theconversation.com/its-time-to-address-the-hidden-agenda-of-school-dress-codes-97600  

It starts out conventionally enough, ‘Normally, what children can and cannot wear in schools is explicitly noted in school policies or implicitly implied by broader cultural or societal norms.’ But then it goes on to assert that ‘The problem with trying to develop a set of guidelines for school dress code policies is that the implementation or restriction of dress is just not about the clothes that kids wear. Dress code policies are mired in larger contested debates that have to do with gender identity, race and sexuality reflective of a broader public discourse.’

Fair enough -there are larger issues than simply reflecting the dominant community ideology. So the author, Dianne Gereluk at the University of Calgary, goes on to acknowledge other facets of school dress codes, namely, ‘Most obviously, the nature of many dress code violations interconnects to issues of gender and sexual identity. The vast majority of cases have targeted girls and LGBTQ youth on the basis that what one might wear reveals too much — that it’s sexually suggestive, distracting for other students or offensive to the local and cultural norms of the community.’ Further, she goes on to suggest that ‘girls have taken the brunt of dress codes’ and that ‘The infractions for noncompliance exacerbate the shaming of girls’ self-perception of their worth.’

And her answer? ‘If educators and policymakers are genuinely worried about the safety of their students or the decorum of dress codes, schools could simply follow the steps of one school administrator from Evanston Township High School in Illinois. The high school’s fundamental “rule” mandated that certain body parts must be covered for all students at all times. Specifically, students must wear their clothes in a way that fully covers their genitals, buttocks, breasts and nipples with opaque fabric. Such a simple yet inevitably provocative dress code policy removes the broader contested aspects of gender, sexual identity, faith or systemic discrimination.’

Really? Merely covering the parts mentioned still leaves an awful lot of provocative skin if anybody chose to show it -and you can bet they would. Also, I think it still panders to the clarion call of Fashion, albeit in an impoverished attempt to pretend the schools are still catering to freedom of choice -however watered-down: “You can dress however expensively, or outrageously as you want… as long as you don’t show those things!”

I suspect I have travelled too widely outside of North America, because rather than looking to Illinois to solve the problem, I would look to… Well New Zealand, for one, is a good model: school uniforms for both boys and girls. Nobody in school can out-fashion anybody else. And since everybody has to wear the same thing, there’s no shame from differing clothing styles. No obvious financial stigmatization. What they wear on their own time, of course, is up to individuals, just as who they decide to hang around with.

I know that many private schools here in Canada and the U.S.A. long ago mandated school uniforms, and although to many people, it is a manifestation of elitism, this would no longer be a problem if every school -public and private- required it. Each school would presumably have its own, unique design, and this in itself might become a source of pride and a perhaps a fashion statement of its own.

It has the advantage, too, of not being able to demarcate -at school, at least- those difficult issues of gender, sexual identity, or even faith about which Dr. Gereluk was so concerned. Perhaps items like the hijab, or maybe even the niqab, could be incorporated into the uniform, although I suspect each school would require community or religious consultation to accommodate their concerns.

And yes, no doubt there would be initial resistance to such a major shift, but it need not be mandated universally, and all at once. Fashions change, styles morph -and people adapt. Allow me to paraphrase a sentence I remember from Shakespeare’s Henry VIII: New customs, though they be ever so ridiculous, yet are followed.

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The Feast of Fools

It’s hard to switch sides, isn’t it? Hard to cross the tracks. And even if you do, does welcome await, or merely sidelong glances and mistrust -or as Macbeth feared, curses not loud but deep, mouth honour, breath which the poor heart would fain deny and dare not…?

It’s a brave person who crosses over –who dares to live the other life. But can one ever feel what one has only watched from afar? Would the experience be real, or only a tawdry simulacrum? A Halloween costume? True, only we know for sure how we perceive something, but we can intuit how someone else might feel –and realize that they might also have a different understanding of what happened. A different reality. So, are we unalterably barred from that room?

I ask this as a man peering over the fence and wondering about what I see. It always seems so… so like my side –so like the cover of the book I’m reading. I suppose that’s where it gets confusing. I know the story is different, and yet I don’t really understand why. But then again, perhaps I’m as naïve a reader as I am a contributor –or is that merely a pretence of innocence? An expected social conceit?

And if I were to attempt a disguise in a situation that even I could see might be demeaning for a woman, would that help me understand? Or would it merely seem weird, and elicit the confused and embarrassed reactions that cross-dressing usually does? Would it take me closer to the lived experience? Or would it be yet another variation of the male Weltanschauung?

An article in the CBC news on sexual discrimination in the workplace made me wonder: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/workplace-sexual-discrimination-men-heels-union-613-1.3483305 ‘The male staff decided to dress up after a CBC Marketplace story  […] on restaurant dress codes and found that many women felt compelled to wear sexy outfits —including high heels, tight skirts and heavy makeup — to keep their jobs.’

I have to say that at first glance, I was reminded of the Medieval Feast of Fools. This, as you may recall, was a festival usually held at the beginning of the new year (especially in France) in which a mock bishop or pope was elected, ecclesiastical ritual was parodied, and low and high officials changed places. And, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, by the 13th century these feasts had become a burlesque of Christian morality and worship. But nobody was fooled; everybody realized it was just a charade…

In the case of the restaurant, ‘The men lasted only an hour or two in the heels, which ran the gamut from red stilettos to cheap, black, strappy numbers. But aside from the physical pain, they also described feeling vulnerable and uncomfortable as they worked.’ And understandably so –they were pretending to be something they most decidedly were not. Everybody –customers and staff- knew it and no doubt played along. ‘”Guys were making comments, jokingly of course, because that’s what we were going for — to show light to it — but even those jokes that they were making were, after a while, still very uncomfortable to be faced with,”’ said one of the servers.

A few of the customers were women who also worked as servers at other restaurants with similar dress codes where they were told to look like they were going to a party, not coming home from it. One of them, who had recently quit one of those places after being sent home for not wearing enough jewellery on her shift, said: ‘”I came here tonight because I love the idea of reversing sexist dress codes required in some restaurants to male colleagues. Seeing them wearing heels and short skirts is really something. I wanted to come down and be a part of it,” she said.

‘”It reinforces how ridiculous it is. Seeing men walk by in tight miniskirts and heels really just hits it home how crazy it is to ask women to do that.”’

The consensus among the women servers watching was that within limits, dress should be about choice. If they felt comfortable with dressing like what they were seeing, that was fine. But many of them didn’t. The doctrine of contra proferentem might apply, perhaps, but I doubt that many of them would go so far as to hire a lawyer to press their cases.

So, apart from some interesting publicity and a bit of teasing, what did the cross-dressing actually accomplish? For guys, dressing like women and trying to balance on high heels they’d never been acculturated to wear -and never had the opportunity to practice on- can only give them the barest whiff of what many women have to endure on an ongoing basis. They weren’t women that night, just actors rehearsing a drama they would never get to play.

Clearly, what the article was pointing out was the tip of a very large iceberg. Highlighting this form of sexual exploitation was merely a way of hinting at the way women in general are regarded in our society –and maybe not just ours… You can legislate fair hiring practices, but it is far more difficult –impossible, actually- to legislate attitude.

It is true, however, that unless the issue is publicized in a manner that shocks people into seeing it, there is unlikely to be any change. Some are hoping the protest might go national, with similar events taking place in various cities across the country. But I worry that, although the cause is worthwhile, too frequent repetition of the burlesque, is also a way of making it seem just confrontational -turning a good idea into a parody, and losing the point it was originally intended to make.

As long as shareholders and owners of companies see profit in sexualizing young women –and men, for that matter- the battle for change will be an uphill one. We are already seeing a backlash against ‘political correctness’, to the extent that many of the gains made in the past few decades are being sidetracked, or even eroded. I suppose it was inevitable that direct confrontation with the status quo would be resisted as would any threat.

But the solution, it seems to me, lies not in confrontation, but in changing what we accept as normal –as proper. And it is already being done with some success nowadays through both social media and advertising strategies. Just look at the change in attitudes about, say, smoking in restaurants, or driving home after a night at the pub. There are already recent, albeit tentative steps in various TV and internet-streamed programs –sitcoms and the like- to portray women less as sexual objects, and more as equal partners in their dealings with men. Some episodes have even attempted, as did those male servers in that Ottawa restaurant, to depict the humiliation that men would experience were the roles reversed. And people are watching and getting used to the idea because the characters on the screen are making it seem, well, normal. Accepted, not contentious. And certainly not antagonistic.

Nothing happens overnight, of course, and although we are understandably impatient for more progress, change that is too rapid often leads to rebellion -especially if that change is precipitate. Unexpected -or worse, abnormal!

“How poor are they that have not patience!” says Iago in Shakespeare’s Othello. “What wound did ever heal but by degrees?”

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The Skirt’s the Thing

Skirts are back in the news –this time in France… for being too long…

You’re kidding! A skirt’s a skirt, right? They’ve been around for thousands of years it would seem, albeit of multiple lengths and designs that accorded with local customs and –perhaps- fashions. The wearers were, of course, were no doubt sometimes tempted to flout the prevailing dress codes and deviate from what was common practice. This risked social approbrium at first, but eventually, as nowadays, also risked becoming the norm. We all flirt with change. We all want to be noticed on occasion –and, at least in the Western world, unique clothing is often a fledgling’s first dangle outside the nest. An experiment in independence.

But what is this deviation –this anti-Fashion- and can we ever differentiate it from protest? Isn’t it always about change? A statement of belonging –or not belonging- to a particular group? An identification for any who care to notice?

Indeed there is a growing body of evidence to suggest that the brains of teenagers, for example, are not just young, unruly adult brains. They differ in neural connections, and although intellectually comparable to those of adults, lack the impulse control that develops with maturity. http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/the-teen-brain-still-under-construction/index.shtml And this is not all bad. For example, Scientists believe that the loss of synapses as a child matures is part of the process by which the brain becomes more efficient. Although genes play a role in the decline in synapses, animal research has shown that experience also shapes the decline. Synapses “exercised” by experience survive and are strengthened, while others are pruned away. From a societal –but mainly, an evolutionary­- standpoint, this is probably a good thing: it encourages new thinking, new perspectives. Innovation.

But what has all this to do with long skirts, I hear you mumbling? Well:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-32510606­

What bothers me is that a girl in France, along with several of her friends, was sent home from school for wearing a long (black) skirt –a 15 year old, Muslim girl no less…

In 2004, France introduced a ban on ‘conspicuous’ religious symbols at state schools in an attempt to enforce its secular version of separation of religion and state. The orginal issue seems to have been Islamic headwear.

But the girls had already removed their Islamic headscarves before entering the school! So what was the issue? The Toronto Star reported that: “It was a concerted action… with a will to put a (religious) identity on display,” Patrice Dutot, inspector of the Ardennes Academy, which oversees the schools in the area, commented by telephone: “It is not the long skirt that is the problem,” Dutot said. The issue is that the girls “had agreed to wear the same skirts… to display their belonging” to a religious group.

Stuff and nonsense! They are teenagers striving for an identity in a society that is bent on a futile quest for homogeneity. If they had decided to dye their hair green, or worn rings in their noses instead, they may well have been tolerated. But even if they were admonished it would not have had the same effect as stigmatizing an entire segment of society –France has about 5 million Muslims which is the largest Muslim minority in Western Europe.

I think it is a policy gone recklessly wrong! While I do not agree with their ban on conspicuous headscarves, if the argument was that the very ostentatiousness of a niqab identified the wearers as members of a religious group, surely the decidedly unpretentious length of a skirt is an individual prerogative –a fashion statement, even. Witness the popularity of the hashtag #JePorteMaJupeCommeJeVeux (I wear my skirt how I want)!

As the BBC reports: In 2011 France became the first European country to ban the full-face Islamic veil – the niqab – in public places. Most of the population – including most Muslims – agree with the government when it describes the face-covering veil as an affront to society’s values.

You’ve made your point, France. Don’t push it too far, though: the lion only slumbers.