Does your school reinforce harassment and rape culture with its dress codes? Yes, it does.
School dress codes are reliably sexist, racist, and ableist. They reinforce toxic masculinity, rape culture, gender binaries, racial profiling, and inequality. Dress codes reproduce normative gender and sexuality preferences.
Almost all school dress codes in the US are illegal. Kids need to sue more.
Ira Socol
dress codes sexualize the female body and racialize the black male body.
Decoding School Dress Codes. Have you ever looked through a school’s… | by Matthew R. Morris | March For Public Education | Medium
I am not a distraction.
“I am not a distraction.”
It’s the statement that’s become a rallying cry across the burgeoning movement against inequitable school dress codes, a movement propelled largely by the young girls who are so often targeted by policies that label the parts of their bodies ― whether covered by yoga pants, spaghetti straps, gym shorts, leggings or tank tops ― as “distractions.”
But recently, Evanston Township High School in Illinois gained accolades for releasing an updated dress code that explicitly forbids body shaming and aims to diminish marginalization of students based on their “race, sex, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, cultural observance, household income or body type/size.”
Sexist School Dress Codes Are A Problem, And Oregon May Have The Answer
We sexualize and racialize bodies through dress codes that target specific people while simultaneously maintaining that these one-dimensional standards are universal. All the while, do we ever consider exactly how a dress code benefits student success and the greater good of education? I was once suspended for wearing my hat in the hallway. I missed two days of school and the only learning I soaked in was that the school and the real world were two distinct places in which one of them pissed me off exponentially more than the other.
We should be thinking about ways to engage all learners in education. We should teach that there is a time and place for particular aesthetics, but I question whether or not that should be done through a dress code policy. Perhaps explicit teaching practice that fosters student awareness on the complexities of cultural appropriateness, spatial or social awareness, and for lack of a better term, “playing the game of school” (which translates into the “game” of life, at least, arguably, from a cultural standpoint) is a better route to take. If you think a dress code is appropriate, bring every stakeholder to the table and have an honest discussion. Do not rely on the so-called gaze of the powerful and privileged to dictate what is and is not acceptable. If we allow this, it is clear how and who such a policy affects.
Decoding School Dress Codes – March For Public Education – Medium
Students, parents, and others have a number of concerns about public school dress codes and their impact on female students. One concern is that many dress codes are explicitly gender-specific, targeting girls but not boys, or are at least selectively enforced such that they impact female students disproportionately. Student discipline includes removal from class, receiving detention, being sent home, or forced to wear a “shame suit” indicating she has violated the school dress code. Female students are powerfully affected by these policies and many express a profound sense of injustice.” The consequences of being “dress coded” have a negative impact on student learning and participation. Beyond the immediate disruption resulting from removal, detention, and the like, studies suggest that a preoccupation with physical appearance based on sexualized norms disrupts mental capacity and cognitive function.
Consistent with the research on sexualization of girls, many are concerned about the larger symbolic messages that dress codes and their enforcement send to students and society. A common thread among school justifications for sex-specific dress codes is that provocative clothing will distract their male classmates or make male teachers feel uncomfortable. A number of commentators thus maintain dress codes communicate that girls’ bodies are inherently sexual, provocative, dangerous, and that harassment is inevitable. Dress codes and their enforcement can impose sexuality on girls even when they do not perceive themselves in sexual terms. Gender study scholars report that dress codes generally have negative ramifications for women, sending a message that exposing the female body is bad. Laura Bates of The Everyday Sexism Project characterizes the dress code phenomenon as “teach[ing] our children that girls’ bodies are dangerous, powerful and sexualized, and that boys are biologically programmed to objectify and harass them.” Thus, dress codes can constitute a type of “everyday pedagogy,” reproducing normative gender and sexuality preferences.
Sexualization, Sex Discrimination, and Public School Dress Codes
Dress Codes and Sensory Overload
Uniform adjustments: hard collars, ties, leather school shoes, formal skirts and trousers, these can all be difficult to manage for many autistic people. The use of more comfortable fabrics can allow us to concentrate more fully on our tasks. Many schools now encourage children to attend school with trainers and a school hoodie for comfort and practicality.
Relaxing or scrapping school uniform policies supports pupils with sensory issues who cannot tolerate wearing the uniform.
Neurodiversity-affirmative education: why and how? | The British Psychological Society
“I have to check the texture of fabrics when I’m clothes shopping. Anything rough or crunchy I can’t wear. I also need soft and stretchy fabrics.”
PsyArXiv Preprints | In our own words: The complex sensory experiences of autistic adults
Promote sensory-friendly clothing choices.
May find aspects of school uniform (or other clothes) difficult or impossible – reasonable adjustment needed.
We can’t stim, are subject to rules around when we can go to the bathroom and forced into chafing uniforms that are, frankly, a sensory hell.
“No attendance score is worth your suffering” — Neurodiverse Connection
The picture shows a school classroom as I see it, as an autistic person. A kaleidoscope of shape and blinding lighting, with vague outlines which are probably other students. Deafening noise. The stench of different smells. The confusion of many voices, including some heard through walls from neighbouring halls and classes. School uniform that feels like barbed wire on my skin.
Dress Codes, Culture, and Identity
An El Paso middle school bans all-black clothing, citing mental health concerns
Texas School Thinks It Can Solve Student Mental Health Issues By Banning Black Clothing | Techdirt
This is just another way to shit on neurodivergent kids who like goth culture. It’s also an example of toxic positivity.
Let’s discriminate against neurodivergent goth and punk and metal kids to improve their mental health. Let’s deny them culture and expression for their own good.
That attitude wraps up so much of what’s wrong into a big, sad burrito of awful.
- toxic positivity
- deficit ideology
- fundamental attribution error
- gaslighting
- bikeshedding
- a total lack of structural ideology
- a total lack of systems thinking
- authoritarianism
- neuronormativity
- masturbation of false culture (to paraphrase “The Good Soldier Švejk”)
- and more
head to toe, I’m dressed in black
A Better Dress Code
- No student should be affected by dress code enforcement because of racial identity, sex assigned at birth, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, ethnicity, cultural or religious identity, household income, body size/type, or body maturity.
- School staff shall not enforce the school’s dress code more strictly against transgender and gender nonconforming students than other students.
- Students should not be shamed or required to display their body in front of others (students, parents, or staff) in school. “Shaming” includes, but is not limited to:
- kneeling or bending over to check attire fit;
- measuring straps or skirt length;
- asking students to account for their attire in the classroom or in hallways in front of others;
- calling out students in spaces, in hallways, or in classrooms about perceived dress code violations in front of others; in particular, directing students to correct sagged pants that do not expose the entire undergarment, or confronting students about visible bra straps, since visible waistbands and straps on undergarments are permitted; and,
- accusing students of “distracting” other students with their clothing.
