Educational Style : How High School Dress Codes Disrupt Education

The dress code is not a rule everyone needs to follow. Everybody is different in terms of skin color, body type, and height, so the stuff everybody wears needs to be different in order to accommodate those differences. People of authority use the school dress code as a way to support harassment and judgement. I’ve seen it everywhere.  

Here’s an example from EdWeek, which explains, “A North Carolina principal suspended a high school girl for 10 days and banned her from attending graduation and any senior activities because she wore a slightly off-shoulder top to school. An assistant principal in Texas drew on a Black boy’s head in permanent marker to cover up a shaved design in his hair. And a transgender girl in Texas was told not to return to school until she followed the school’s dress code guidelines for boys.” If people can’t be comfortable in what they wear then they won’t be focused on what they learn because they are too worried about what they’re wearing. If teachers are so focused on what their students wear, to the point they might assault them (as in the Texas example), then their lessons become ineffective. Due to different body types and genders, certain things look different on different people. If the people who hold authority cannot safely keep everyone, males included, accountable to the dress code, then there is no reason to have one at all. 

Coming from my personal experience this has happened more than once; I get dress coded by an administrator, and then I have to miss my first period classes in order to go home and change or to put on the dirty used clothes the school provides. Last year, my first two classes were biology and English, which are very important classes. I missed everything I should have been learning about, and started overthinking about whether or not it would affect my grades, which of course a dress coding shouldn’t impact. I got so paranoid about being dress coded that I started bringing another outfit to school as a back up. Even in June I brought black leggings and a sweatshirt. You could definitely see how it’s affecting my learning experience being so hot and bothered all the time. Having the thought of this dress code taking time out of my day and how it’s not enforced equally on everyone makes it harder to learn in other important classes. The dress code is different for certain people. A girl that was skinnier than me had very short shorts on, yet I was the one who got dress coded. Also, boys wear tank tops half the school year, but when I show a bit of shoulder I’m suddenly in the wrong. 

According to my school’s website “When participating in field trips to Mass General Brigham or other clinical or professional settings, students are required to wear Edward M Kennedy-issued scrubs (the school provides one pair) and closed-toe shoes. Open-toe shoes are not permitted during these activities to ensure safety and professionalism.” Since we spend a lot of our in-school time in hospital settings with required uniforms, what we wear in our school buildings should not matter. Also, it’s important to point out that boys and girls wear the exact same hospital-required scrubs, so this is a dress code that is actually fair.

High school dress codes are centered around oppressing young girls. A Planned Parenthood article explains, “My teachers and peers should not be uncomfortable by my shoulders. My teacher and peers should not look at me as a sexual object. Within our education system dress codes teach and enforce sexism starting from a young age. Rather than teaching young girls to hide themselves and be ashamed, we should start teaching [everyone] to treat women with respect and see them as equal participants in the educational system.​​” I chose to source this because it highlights the fact that high school dress codes are heavily influenced by gender and skewed against people who are AFAB (Assigned Female At Birth). The school dress codes themselves don’t specifically say this, but you can conclude that dress codes definitely affect girls more than boys. In my school there shouldn’t be a dress code because at the end of the day we all have to wear the same thing eventually and there shouldn’t be a difference between what a female and male wears.

I interviewed Karen Louis, my best friend and a person who goes to my school who has been affected by the dress code. I asked her, “Do you think the dress code only impacts girls?”  She exclaimed, “Yes it does because it is misogynistic and is biased to men because females have a more defined body type and have breasts while men don’t. In the pictures [at our school] it showed a woman with a bigger chest and a short torso on the right and another woman a bit skinnier and smaller on the left. The women on the left wouldn’t be dresscoded but the women on the right would be… what sense does that make? The dress code makes it seem like we are putting our bodies out there when we aren’t.”  This shows that other people are experiencing the oppression that only young women get from the dress code whilst young men don’t. Karen also explained her experience that connected to my personal one about having to go home and change affecting the work we from the classes we miss. The dress code not only affects me, but my best friend and other girls on how we perform in academics whether it’s going home or being uncomfortable. The main point of school is getting an education, and we can’t easily get this education if we are constantly getting judged or missing important classes.