Friday, August 29, 2003

Cracking the Dress Code

Next week, hundreds of kids attending the new alternative schools in the South Bend public school system are returning to the classroom dressed with a difference – thanks to the new strict dress codes. My two daughters are among them, and the response in our household to the dress code has been ... topsy-turvy. The girls, having spent weeks “practicing” wearing their stark button-down shirts and simple jumpers and pants, are totally psyched. Me? I’m the one chafing a bit – knowing this dress code is probably a good thing, but mourning the loss, nevertheless, of that bit of wacky individuality that my children express in clothing.

In my most rational moments, I fully support the dress code, having done playground duty and seen kids younger than I would have dreamed dressing like glittery hip-huggered and baggy-pantsed pop stars. I often had to stifle my Church Lady impulse to say, with tightly pursed lips, “My, we don’t look like we’re ready to learn, do we?” Those straight khaki pants and buttoned shirts will scare the Eminems — and Britney Spears – out of any kid.

And I am persuaded by the claims that strict dress codes can eliminate the show-off dressing that makes class differences visible, and that can only be good for democratic education. Ironically, in my childhood, we rag-tag dressers from the public schools always thought the kids waiting for the parochial school bus in their plaid uniforms were the rich kids, the classy kids – the kids whose families paid for something we got for free, like so much government cheese. Those uniform clothes were a signal to me that they were insiders in a club I’d never belong to. And so, when I see my daughters preening in their A-line jumpers, my heart skips a beat – as if my children are passing before my eyes into another social class and leaving me behind in the embarrassing Old Country of the previous generation.

The flip side of egalitarian economics is my only real beef with the dress code, actually. The claim is that dress codes save parents money on school clothes, but this is only true if you’re a family who actually buys new school clothes. Most of my friends, like myself, rely heavily on large bags of hand-me-down clothing passed along through generous family members and friends. We troll second-hand shops and garage sales for bargains, and I have grown to love the eye-popping combinations of polka-dots and plaids my girls put together from these eclectic collections. None of our bargain clothing fit the bill for the dress code, so for the first time we have had to purchase new school clothes. Even at the cheapest store, the cost took my breath away. How do struggling families manage? I hope the school will hold clothing trades in the future so we can all make ends meet as our kids grow. Goodness knows my daughters’ polyester jumpers will never decompose, let alone wear out. They have years of good schooling in them.

At least we managed to find clothes I wouldn’t have to iron, something I do so seldom that the last time I brought out the iron my youngest daughter cringed and asked nervously, “Will it be very loud when you plug it in?”

For my girls, the new dress code feels like costuming, like performance, and I suppose this is an important part of the appeal, as anyone knows who has donned a power suit for a scary meeting and felt the confidence that comes, mysteriously, from shoulder pads and good tailoring. Dressing to learn can’t be much different.

When I asked my girls if they would mind looking the same as everyone else, my nine-year-old pointed out, with a touch of condescending patience that I’ll no doubt hear more of down the road: “But Mom, we won’t all look the same; our heads will be different.” And this, of course is the point; school is about heads – what’s on the inside, not what we drape on our frames.

I guess what feels so poignant is that my daughters seem to belong to someone else when they’re in those dress-code clothes – no longer simply marked by my nurture, but now, starkly, by culture. They are insiders in yet another club I’m not part of – one more step on the journey that will stretch to the breaking point the umbilical cord I still picture between us. But of course, this is why we have children – not to hold them so close that they are only ever ours, but, instead, to give them, lovingly, achingly, to the world, to wear as many hats as their spirits allow.

Broadcast by April Lidinsky on August 29, 2003
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