At a newsroom meeting a few days ago, the young staff of The Item was treated to its yearly reminder about dress code policy. I’d known about it in advance from a colleague, who told me that the office has a tendency to get lax in the summer, but once fall rolls around it’s time to shape up and look smart.
After the meeting, the news editor and I debriefed our (extremely well-dressed) publisher, who asked us how the staff took the news, and we replied that the whole thing went over fairly well.
“Really?” he asked.
I told him I didn’t think anybody wanted to single themselves out by advocating for their right to wear a Bart Simpson T-shirt to work.
“Well,” he replied. “These things can get political.”
And, of course, he’s right.
For some time, middle- and high schoolers across the country have been pushing back against school dress codes they deem misogynistic and unjustly punitive. The primary rallying cry seems to be, “if my bare shoulders are distracting you, that’s YOUR problem.”
An Atlantic piece published as far back as 2015 hinges the issue around one high-school girl in Woodford County, Ky. named Maggie Sunseri, who took to documentary filmmaking to get her message across.
“It’s not really the formal dress code by itself that is so discriminatory, it’s the message behind the dress code,” Sunseri told the Atlantic. “My principal constantly says that the main reason for (it) is to create a ‘distraction-free learning zone’ for our male counterparts.”
The Atlantic went on to confirm that Woodford County was “one of many districts across the country to justify female-specific rules with that logic, and effectively, to place the onus on girls to prevent inappropriate reactions from their male classmates.”
As dissatisfaction turned into out-and-out protest, the Atlantic charted draconian dress-code rules (being forced to “test” if clothing was revealing by bending over in front of peers, wearing a neon shirt emblazoned with the words DRESS CODE VIOLATOR) and their corresponding uprisings from California to North Carolina to Florida to New Jersey and beyond. In one such protest, a hashtag was coined: #IAmMoreThanADistraction.
In a way, these young girls paved the way for the #MeToo movement, with a coordinated message taking the form of a chorus of women’s voices. Change.org petitions abounded; the ACLU got involved.
In fact, in June of this year, a group of middle-school girls from Lynnfield made their own video about the dress code at their school and presented it to the School Committee. Their points were consistent with the girls and women who came before them: unfair enforcement, imbalanced rules, and undue punishment.
One of the girls related an experience of being called out for what she was wearing, saying that it made her feel insecure and embarrassed.
“All I could think about was what people thought of me,” she said.
Committee Chair Rich Sjoberg said he’d review the dress code and consider the changes the group was suggesting and revisit the issue before school started; the dress code has since been updated.
So what does this have to do with the dress code policy at the Daily Item? Well, to affirm my publisher’s comment, the issue certainly is political. But it’s not like our office dress code much resembles that of a public school in Kentucky.
The gist of our dress code is “business casual” ― no gym shoes, no ripped jeans, no shirts with off-color slogans. Mention is made about not wearing clothing that “reveals too much skin or undergarments,” but that’s hardly equivalent to sending a girl home for the day because her collarbone is showing.
The contrast here, between our dress code and the dress codes that have been making the news, is that the former serves to uplift and the latter serves to diminish.
Yes, that’s right ― self-styled anarchist though I may be, I think some rules and regulations around appearance might in this context be a good thing.
See, the thing is, we are quite a young staff. The oldest among our reporters, photographers, and designers is barely 30. We’re just beginning our professional lives, and now’s a good time to be pushed in the direction of professionalism; pride in one’s appearance breeds pride in one’s work. Essentially, we are being told what we can be, while young girls are routinely being told by teachers and school officials what they can’t be.
That said, I hope the Lynnfield School Committee makes the right call and makes the dress-code reforms put forth by such a thoughtful and forward-thinking group of girls.
As for my office at the Daily Item, I am more than happy to save my Bart Simpson T-shirt for the weekends.
