Rebecca Smyth, Spain, SSH Blog Correspondent
Feminism and related activism require a huge amount of personal reflection and exploration. This is a reflection. My opinions are open to reconfiguration and nuancing. You are entitled to agree or disagree in part or completely. I’d be really interested to hear back from people as to what they think and feel on some of the issues raised here.
There’s been a lot in the media (well, on Buzzfeed…) lately about high school dress codes in North America and students’ challenging them.* It’s something I’ve been following with keen interest for many reasons, not the least of which being that it’s almost completely alien to my Irish school experience.
The vast majority of schools in Ireland require their students to wear a uniform. It’s just the norm for us. There’s a lot to be said for school uniforms: they’re convenient (it’s half seven in the morning and you can get dressed on auto-pilot); they can keep costs down for parents (lots of supermarkets and cheaper high street shops stock school uniform-type skirts, pants and shirts at those low, low prices we all love and not-that-deep-down know to be the product of egregious human rights violations in someplace far, far away); and they tend to eliminate, or at least, ameliorate bullying related to clothing, fashion, style and what have you.
And yet, perhaps, dear reader, you can sense my hesitation. I genuinely feel there are many positive aspects to uniforms, not least those enumerated above.
But I hated it. Hated it.
I hated that there was no avenue for personal expression. I hated that we had to wear a tie. I hated the lumpen jumper and tent-like skirt and bin-bag-like school jacket that swamped me. I hated that pants weren’t an option, as though girls automatically must wear skirts. I hated what seemed to me to be arbitrary demarcations – formerly raven-haired students could have bleach blonde hair as it was a ‘natural’ colour, but anything more outré was out. Dubarrys were fine but Doc Martens weren’t. One set of ear studs in the traditional ear-stud place were acceptable, but other piercings and larger earrings most certainly were not. Nail varnish was banned on health and safety grounds, but you’d be sent to the loos with all sorts of huffable chemicals to remove it. ‘Subtle’ make-up was permissible but ‘too much’ and to the loos with you with a stack of make-up wipes. That last one was probably the least heavily enforced. I think it was out of deference to the fact that many people wear heavy make-up to hide their skin and the adolescent travails it can suffer.
Now, before y’all get up in arms about this, I want to put it firmly in context. This is pretty much the norm, give or take a few specifications here and there, for school dress codes in Ireland. Furthermore, I cannot commend highly enough the staff of my former school who very much have the best interests of their students at heart. Finally, and something that international readers may be intrigued by, it was an all-girls school. None of this was to do with ‘distracting’ boys – at least not within the school walls.
Nevertheless, it certainly conforms to and perpetuates many of the stereotypes that underpin dress codes in businesses worldwide and those North American schools. As Shauna Pomerantz, an associate professor at Brock University says in an interview with Buzzfeed, ‘appropriateness’ is defined in terms of class- and race-based values, namely that “[Y]ou have to look like a middle-class, heterosexual white woman.”
And this is where I really have to start challenging myself, because I am all those things, and one of my style icons is Audrey Hepburn.** So I am very much of the less-is-more, the eyes-or-lips-but-not-both, the legs-or-boobs-but-not-both school of make-up and style. To a point. That’s what primarily works for me and my appearance and body type and gender identity. But that doesn’t mean it’s right or good or works for everybody, nor would I be arrogant enough to assume so. And I have to call myself out on this regularly because unfortunately I have internalised the prejudices that float around us just like everybody else. If you want to wear a ton of make-up in whatever configuration you see fit, you should be allowed to. If you want to wear whatever clothes it is you want to wear, you should be able to. Unfortunately though, there is a catch.
That word.
Should.
I sure as hell don’t like it, but we are judged on our appearance and the way we present ourselves to the world. We shouldn’t be, but we are.
How do we go about challenging this? Are there limits to how far we should go?
I don’t want to reclaim the word ‘slut’. I just want it binned. But I think the Toronto-based Project Slut is really on to something big. I don’t think crop tops are the ideal choice of clothing attire for anywhere except by the pool or at the beach, but I sure as hell don’t think someone should be stared at, harassed or raped for wearing one elsewhere. I think ideally your foundation should match your skin tone, but I think it’s messed up that ‘skin colour’ usually means ‘white people’s skin colour.’
I also wonder if all this stuff is a big, steaming pile of misdirection – a symptom being mistaken for an illness.
Unless we recognise that dress codes, ‘slut shaming’, ‘beach bodies’ and all the rest are about controlling and regulating the already disenfranchised, we’re going to keep missing the point.
Street harassment has nothing to do with what you’re wearing or not wearing. I know this from personal experience and far too many stories of other people’s experiences.
Enforcing rigid dress codes and reiterating ideas of what is appropriate and inappropriate that have their basis in racist, sexist, classist and heteronormative ideas perpetuate the false connection between how we present ourselves to the world and how the world should treat us.
Other than thinking and talking and writing about this, I don’t know how best to tackle it. If anyone has any better ideas, please enlighten me!
For further reading, here are a few articles from BuzzFeed.
* One important issue I don’t touch on here, at least directly, is that of natural hair. I am white. I am Irish. I have read about and followed with great interest and anger the hostility, snide remarks and suspensions meted out to people of colour of all ages who wear their hair naturally or in locs or braids and myriad styles. I don’t feel it’s my place to say anything other than I think natural hair and natural styles are beautiful. And I don’t mean that in any exoticising, othering, oh-my-God-can-I-touch-your-hair way. I just mean it’s beautiful and the fact it’s seen as ‘unprofessional’ or ‘not in keeping with school dress codes’ is disgusting.
** Also Santigold and St. Vincent and Karen O and M.I.A. but I wouldn’t be quite confident enough to wear exact replicas of their finery nipping to the supermarket. Someday, someday…
Rebecca is currently living, working and stumbling through ballet classes in Barcelona. Originally from Kilkenny, she has a degree in European Studies and a Master’s in Gender and Women’s Studies from Trinity College Dublin, and will be doing an LLM in Human Rights Law in Edinburgh this fall.
