If you’re a female student at Northwood, you are probably quite familiar with the dress code. Maybe you’ve even gotten in trouble for violating it, or if you personally haven’t, you are most likely friends with someone who has. Yes, thoughts of the dress code are always looming in the backs of our minds, whether it’s when we get dressed in the morning or when we go shopping for new clothes.
But what about the male students? How often do they think about dress code? I think, at least for most of them, dress code is rarely a concern.
The stated purpose of Chatham County’s dress code is to minimize distractions during the school day. I fully support that ideal. Schools make rules so that kids can be safe and learn. Here’s the problem: there are a lot of distracting things that a person can wear. Many of them are not banned by the dress code.
Sparkles, neon colors, high heels, dyed hair, heavy makeup and t-shirts with words on them are just a few of the things you can see at Northwood on a daily basis that have a greater potential to distract from learning than, say, a girl’s bare shoulders or legging-clad legs.
So the question we have to ask ourselves is: does the dress code really minimize distractions, or is it a reflection of the mostly subconscious sexism so deeply entrenched in our society?
I’m sure that the people who wrote the dress code had nothing but the best intentions. The people who enforce the dress code, too, believe that they are doing the right thing. But sometimes, I think, the cards are stacked against female students. You could argue that boys don’t wear things that are offensive. But I would counter that I have seen examples of boys wearing distracting clothes, and you probably have too.
Last year, a kid attended one of my classes wearing a zippered sweatshirt that he had unzipped to the bottom of his sternum without a shirt underneath. On Character Day, a boy chose to wear a short, gold-colored one-piece police officer costume. While such items are not explicitly prohibited, a female student wearing a low-cut sweatshirt or a “sexy cop” costume would probably not be allowed to continue her day without changing. It’s easy for a male student violating dress code to simply take his hat off or pull up his pants, while a female student with long legs has to miss most of her classes as she waits for her parents to bring her a longer skirt.
Female sexuality, particularly that of young women, has always been more threatening than male sexuality. Counterintuitively, this is because women are viewed as sex objects. Our bodies are distractions and need to be covered, because obviously men can’t, instead, be held responsible for staying focused. However, the school has a responsibility to its students to be equitable in the enforcement of its rules.
–By Frances Beroset