I’m going to be honest, I’ve never had to conform to a serious dress code. In elementary school, the uniform was a white collared shirt and navy pants or skirts. In middle school, the dresscode was more lenient, and by 8th grade, not even enforced. High school was even better for me. I went to a school that required an audition, one of nine specialized high schools in the whole city. Creative dressing was an earmark of attending such a school. Obviously, no one wanted to parade around Manhattan in a uniform.
Throughout my early education, I appreciated looser or non-existent uniform requirements. As a result, I find that many dress codes are misogynistic, expensive, and completely eliminate individuality. Let’s start with the misogyny.
Girls are always required to wear skirts when dress codes are enforced — at least from what I’ve seen around Manhattan. I’ve talked to some of these women on the train who asked where I was coming from in all-casual clothes with a backpack on. Work? Some sort of performance club? Girls in these schools (I’m speaking from personal experience) feel helpless because they’re watching what they’re wearing so that they don’t distract boys.
Promoting the idea that women need to watch what they wear to avoid distracting boys normalizes rape culture. This is not only dangerous — it’s also untrue. It doesn’t matter what they wear. Women still get raped. In the 1950s, women wore long, pleated skirts that only revealed ankles. They still got raped. In the 1800s, women wore long frocks and several layers of clothing. They still got raped. Rape has nothing to do with fashion and everything to do with rapists.
And why should women watch what they wear to decrease the chances of a man looking at them when we could just completely eliminate those chances by teaching boys not to stare at women’s knees? “I can’t tell you the amount of times I’ve felt good-looking even in my uniform only to have it completely ruined because some creep in the year above me keeps staring at me. I went from feeling confident to feeling like I needed to run away, hide, cover up some more,” said one of my peers who went to Dominican Academy, a private school on East 68th Street. For her, school uniforms had reduced self-esteem and had made her feel sexualized.
Additionally, uniforms are expensive and many parents can’t afford them. Other clothes that students have and like are weekend clothes, which means they spend more time in the closet. Those clothes are outgrown and those rarely worn clothes need to be bought again as children grow up. Public schools enforcing dress codes with uniforms should thus provide these uniforms for students.
Uniforms also eliminate individually. At my high school, there were girls who wore hoops big enough to fit both hands, faux fur coats draped across shoulders, tattoos on forearms and collarbones, nose rings and piercings galore. Everyone dressed as an individual. I think everyone’s unique sense of fashion is way of screaming into the world, “This is who I am.” It’s a liberating claim of yourself. I feel like I’m more than my student ID number or my class number because I can be distinguished in the classroom.
Why do all students get excited for picture day, the one day a year where students can wear what they want? It’s not like what you wear affects your work ethic. What I wear is none of the school’s business. What matters is how I actually perform in class.