In the first section of the three-page document, the school outlines its ‘dress code philosophy,’ which includes this delightfully salty statement: ‘All students and staff should understand that they are responsible for managing their own personal ‘distractions’ without regulating individual students’ clothing/self expression.’
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Our school is rather good about dress code, but still can’t resist gendering things for the swimming pool.
Actually that’s a good point. How is the “nipples must be covered” rule enforced for swimming? Since traditionally boys are allowed to bare theirs in swimwear.
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How do they expect any education to be possible without enough shame to reinforce it?
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Section two outlines the body parts that must be covered by clothes: genitals, buttocks, breasts, and nipples. That’s it.
[…] pornography or illegal activities, and hate speech
[…] They also can’t just wear swimsuits to school.
Seems to me there’s a lot of language there open to creative interpretation by budding rules-lawyers in the name of being “edgy”, because we can’t have nice things like dress codes that don’t suck.
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Or - just because the students are the majority, and in a public school they have no obligation to cater to an administrative minority. School is where most people are first conditioned to obey their government instead of overseeing it, and that lesson sticks.
But that video was great! I LOLd at “stilleakers”.
That’s…surprisingly well done!
One thing, has anyone ever actually worn pajamas to school? Is that a thing nowadays? I mean I personally see no problem with it, but it’s kind of out of its element, like wearing a wetsuit. It’s very task-specific clothing.
Well, yeah, someone will show up in stirrups or something. But it won’t be a problem if the staff are taught to be smart about enforcement.
Yeah, people did at my daughter’s high school. Pajama pants, usually, with a t-shirt. And once or twice my kid wore her Totoro kigurumi to school. Which, you know, if “distraction” is the usual excuse for banning types of clothing, that’s probably way more distracting than a bra strap.
Edit: Also, I went to college at UCSB. The campus literally ends in the Pacific Ocean. People did indeed come to class in wetsuits, fresh off surfing at the point. Bikinis, too.
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Before my military boarding school days, when I was a kid in public HS, on the occasions I deigned to show up (usually to vanish into the large library) I would wear the most idiosyncratic stuff I could find at thrift and curio shops. Although my parents were none too keen on my fashion choices, looking back I’m impressed that not once did anyone in the school tell me to change or criticize what I wore, though some of the snarky comments were hilarious to me. My favorite was when one classmate remarked, Whoa, who killed the couch?
Man, I was one strange kid.
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Wealthy neighborhood, so I guess it makes sense it would start there. Hopefully it catches on to places like Cicero.
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I went to school in Michigan, it was winter all the time, but for the 2 months it was warm enough, wearing shorts to school was not an issue. In Spring during the 7th grade, I moved to Nashville. It would be 90ºf and 95% humidity, but shorts were not allowed. I was flabberghasted. I recall a local
TV news item where fed-up high-school boys started wearing skirts to school in protest.
Also, I remember hair length being a huge bone of contention among the young men down south. Up north, the white kids were on a heavy Swatch-and-Benneton tip, the black kids were repping hip hop. Long hair was not a thing for the boys. In Nashville, at the school I was zoned for, I was still trying to look like Sonny Crockett on Miami Vice, but the other white kids were going for Nikki Sixx or Jon Bon Jovi, hair-wise. There was a lot of “Jesus had long hair!” retorts.
ETA: my last remaining photo of the Don Johnson haircut:
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while i have said more than once since i started teaching 20+ years ago “if g-strings and pasties were allowed by the dress code someone would show up topless just for the fuck of it” i have been frustrated by dress codes from the time i was a student in high school and worked to get the aclu to take my district to court for discrimination on the basis of its dress code. when my present school district (medium sized town in central texas) decided to go to a uniform dress code 14 years ago and we had faculty meetings on the topic to give feedback to central office about our feelings on the proposals i argued eloquently and alone against the dress code in the name of student expression.
this is a dress code both 18 year old me and 56 year old me could get behind.
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When I taught college in Duluth, MN, the kids could go from classroom to dorm through tunnels in the winter, and often showed up in their PJs. It was demoralizing for those of us for whom the daily trek from home to school involved engine block heaters, heavy down parkas, and tall galoshes.
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College.
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sometimes, like during red ribbon week or during our fundraiser, my school has a pajama day despite the uniform dress code.
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I once dressed out for gym in pajamas
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About time someone with a brain and a conscience was allowed to participate in drafting a dress code.
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If by pajamas you mean cotton pants, then yes, certainly. If by pajamas you mean bedclothes, then no.
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My kids school has uniforms. Which turns out to be pretty nice. You don’t have to decide what to wear, and lot of times you can find stuff used. The tops are usually pretty cheap at old navy or even walmart. Makes it easy for enforcement with zero inconsistencies. They do have pajama or dress down days on occasion if you want to pay a dollar or so that goes to charity.
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My public school had mandatory uniforms through the lower grades, but the middle and upper grades did not have uniforms. Of course those are the grades in which the dress codes started to get weird, one year leggings were banned because administration decided they were “too distracting” for boys. Thankfully that rule was reversed though, IIRC.
