Hernando Today
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Uniform Dress Code Still In Fashion
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Published: May 14, 2008
It had to come down to this: Parents are threatening to sue the Hernando County School Board to block proposed dress codes. Get real, parents.
It wasn't all that long ago — well, actually it was — since mother dictated the clothing I'd don for my elementary school day. No legal challenges; no questions asked. Mother had charge of the household.
All the other kids in the class dressed more or less alike — not fashion plates, mind you, but tidy — except for that quiet European refugee boy who always wore baggy knickers. The "old lady" teacher — she might have been in her 30s — even had a dress on every day — and kept it on.
Entering college as a teenager on my own, my peers whispered a little advice. "Herbert, you'll never get anywhere on campus if you don't wear 'the uniform'," they warned.
"The uniform" of a half-century ago was a three-piece suit, button-down shirt, striped club tie, dark stockings with color-coordinated garters, and loafers with tassels (not so stylish now, I hear). Next to registering for classes in September, the most important stop of young college life would be at the local Brooks Brothers haberdashery.
While that somber dress code is pretty much limited to Wall Street these days, the latest campus uniform is more likely jeans and sweatshirts. And flip-flops, if the kids have a say. Not very practical come gym time, though.
A uniform dress code of sorts is still in fashion for many of us — even if we're holding down a minimum-wage McJob, stacking shelves at Wal-Mart or mixing paint at Home Depot.
We'll always have a dress code — although it doesn't have to be a uniform. We'd better get used to it. What better place to learn that lesson than in the classroom? Of course, teachers need to set better examples. They can't exercise much authority in a smelly old T-shirt. An equally cooling polo shirt will command more respect in front of a class.
Saber-rattling parents argue that dress codes force conformity, restrain creativity or whatever. I couldn't disagree more. Not only do dress codes prepare students to face the real world; students aren't mature enough or possess sufficient knowledge yet to make choices on their own.
Critics reason that imposing a dress code detracts from the duties of a parent. Duties? Where are the parents in this, anyway? Almost by default, the school system has been left to define and enforce what's respectable clothing.
With both parents at work in many households, they don't have time to supervise details like whether little Willy should wear tattered jeans or crisp khakis to school. Largely, they've forsaken their traditional roles as sensible adults.
Still, the external role model is a handy alternative. Shunning school dress codes, kids today have little other choice than to pursue the examples of an allegedly drug-snorting professional sportsman with the plumber's crack or a half-naked young actress who doesn't even bother with underwear.
Or Miley Cyrus. There was quite an uproar recently when suggestive photos of a compromised Cyrus, a.k.a. Disney's Hannah Montana, were splashed across the pages of the upscale Vanity Fair magazine. Miley is both a supposedly innocent teenager and a role model for just about every little girl in America.
Miley stemmed her own dress code controversy, at least temporarily, with an abject apology for what Vanity Fair had defended as "natural." Many parents were visibly upset, though, when they realized their own kids may have just been trying to ape the bare back and come-hither look of a 15-year-old Miley Cyrus.
Miley aside, some dress codes don't stay around very long." Casual Fridays" are going the way of the dot.com bubble in Silicon Valley. The average white-collar worker doesn't have the deep pockets or the designer jeans of the boss' "expensive casual" style.
Other lessons here, too, hark back to the three-piece "uniform" days gone by. Chances are, you'll miss out on a promotion if you don't dress to show that you care about your job. Also, customers may not expect you to wear "power suits," but they'll feel more comfortable (and maybe sign more contracts) if you dress to the hilt.
A regular columnist for Hernando Today, John Herbert lives in Spring Hill.
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