The email from my daughter’s elementary school principal arrived one spring afternoon. It stated that effective immediately for all elementary school students (K-6th grade), halter tops and spaghetti straps were no longer allowed. Aside from the inconvenience–I had just purchased several sundresses, some with spaghetti straps, for my five-year-old daughter–I was surprised not only by the content of the message, but also by its apparent urgency.
During a meeting with the principal, we learned that the precipitating event for the newly installed clothing ban was that a 2nd grade boy had touched the bare back of a 2nd grade girl without her consent. “And banning halter tops will stop boys from touching girls without their consent?” we asked. The principal, who identified herself as a feminist, was taken aback by our question. For her, this cause and effect seemed obvious: if you ban halter tops and spaghetti straps, then boys will stop touching girls. This was in 2007 at an elementary school in Chapel Hill, NC, a progressive university community. Little did I know that this experience was just the beginning of my dress code battles.
Returning in 2012 from a year living in Amherst, MA, my daughter entered 6th grade, which was part of the intermediate school. Neither my daughter nor I was prepared for the rigid dress code that awaited us in the Texas schools–for intermediate and middle schools, sleeveless shirts needed to be “three fingers” across the shoulder and the “Hem lengths of dresses, skirts, shorts, and skorts must be below each individual’s fingertips. Clothing should meet fingertip length at all times. If a student wears tight-fitting pants, he or she must also wear clothing over them which meets the fingertip requirement for length.” As the high school handbook states, in addition to the fingertip length requirement, no sleeveless shirts (no matter how many fingers across) were allowed.
The official College Station school policy was more careful about the reasons for the dress code: “We’re teaching them to dress professionally. We want them to practice now so that they are prepared later.” Occasionally a teacher or administrator slipped, explicitly stating that the dress code was in place because otherwise, girls would distract boys. The blatant sexism, compulsory heterosexism, and rigid gender binarism, in addition to the untruth about professional dress, embedded in the dress code and its deployment was not lost on me nor is it lost on the middle or high school students. The normalization of the policing of girls’ bodies by way of clothing often includes the normalization of the racism of policing black and brown bodies, typically, though not only, by banning dreadlocks or other hairstyles. Violating the dress code is classified as a general conduct violation, which could result in suspension from school.
I admit that before these encounters, I never really gave dress codes much thought. Although the 70s and early 80s (my K-12 school years) boasted fashion ideas that one would have been justified in banning for aesthetic reasons, we nonetheless wore tube tops, halter tops, and short shorts to school without penalty. Yet, what started as a personal battle to fight the dress codes in our school district because of their negative impact on my daughters, developed into an academic interest. At the same time that I was battling the dress codes, I was writing a paper on education, technology, and social control and researching a book chapter on the Magdalen laundries. The themes in these two research projects intersected with the dress code battle. Schools are frequently the site of social control and the punishment for deviating from school rules was often swift and severe.
Many of the girls sent to the Magdalen laundries were accused of being “too pretty” or tempting boys into sexual activity. They were humiliated and shamed for engaging in sexual behavior; they were punished for the possibility that they might engage in sexual behavior in the future; and they were frequently blamed for a man having raped them. As I worked through these research projects, I noticed that the language used in the K-12 school dress code policies looked strikingly similar to language used to refer to the women in the Magdalen laundries.
Maggie Sunseri’s documentary, Shame: A Documentary on School Dress Code, explores this theme along with the general gendered discrimination in the language that motivates and enforces school dress codes. Recent criticisms of high school dress codes claim that not only are the dress codes sexist but also that they “unfairly target girls by body-shaming and blaming them for promoting harassment.” In other words, similar to the girls who were sent to the Magdalen laundries for being too pretty, girls in US high schools are also shamed for what they wear (see Tanenbaum or Easy A).
Sunseri states, “My principal constantly says that the main reason for the dress code is to create a ‘distraction-free learning zone’ for our male counterparts,” privileging the learning environment for male students while also placing the blame and responsibility for their ability to learn squarely on the [covered] shoulders of the young women. These claims are ubiquitous and appear in nearly every report about the US high school dress codes. Repeatedly, the young women interviewed for articles about the dress codes or who appear in Sunseri’s documentary confess to the feeling of shame the dress codes have on them.
Although at times when I discussed the dangers of the dress code, I felt a bit like Chicken Little yelling that the sky was falling: for me there was a clarity to its dangers. The dress code was not simply a minor inconvenience nor was it only a violation of self-expression for teens. The dress code, insofar as the schools explicitly link girls’ clothing to modesty, distracting boys, and unwanted touching, revealed itself to be one of the most harmful rules for girls in K-12 schools. The dress codes for girls are the introduction to and the reproduction of rape culture in which girls are not only blamed for the violence, in particular sexual violence, done to them but also sent a message that there is something wrong with them for just being girls.
As a feminist theorist working at the intersection of 20th-century French philosophy and themes in philosophy of education, I found the work of Althusser and Foucault productive for thinking through the theoretical foundations and philosophical implications of these dress codes. Kate Manne offers another way to think about Althussser’s structures that describe the respective roles of law and ideology as mechanisms for controlling behavior (see especially chapter 3 in Down Girl).
Manne distinguishes between sexism and misogyny, two terms that she argues have been wrongly used interchangeably. For Manne, sexism is the belief that women are inferior to men and they ought to be subordinate. Misogyny is the enforcer, the laws or actions (outside of law) that keep women down. Manne’s structure is especially helpful when applied to the school dress codes. Sexism produces the view that women should dress modestly—women are temptresses, distractions, sluts, and responsible for men’s behavior. Misogyny produces the dress codes that enforce this view, not only through real punishments, e.g., in-school suspension, but also through the threat that if they wear this clothing, they are responsible for whatever violence might happen to them. The shame produced by both the negative views of women who dress this way (sluts) and the codes (which make violators feel like sexual criminals) is draped over girls like a piece of clothing they are unable to remove.
With the exception of women and young girls who explicitly reject the role of modesty in female subjectivity, the majority of women and men who support and enforce the dress codes actually believe in this criterion of modesty: even our principal identified as a feminist. They use words like distraction or they attempt to scare young girls with a claim that “boys will see their undergarments” if their shorts are not long enough. The concern is either that girls will function like sexual objects or be ridiculed. While a school-based punishment hangs in the distance as the ultimate enforcer—the concrete punishment that scares the students into following the rules—the primary, or underlying, enforcer of the dress code is the ideology. On the surface the students think they are afraid of detention or a suspension, but the more subtle controlling force is being shamed, humiliated, and ostracized.
One can see the limits and the functioning of the ideology when a young child says, “I don’t care” to the threat that “boys will see you.” The child calls out the emperor’s no clothes, pulls the curtain to reveal the wizard, or following Nietzsche’s analysis from On the Genealogy of Morals, rejects the threat of exile for a perceived transgression. What does an authority do when the ideology is rejected? On the one hand, the power is revealed to be ephemeral because although punishment can occur, the primary aim—that is, to control girls’ behavior through ostracism or shame—has been subverted. On the other hand, the authority can take the fear-mongering one step farther, telling these young girls that the dress code is for their own protection, to prevent unwanted touching and even rape.
As unfair as it is to make young women responsible for the learning environment of young men, the danger that these dress codes perpetuate rape culture should alarm the school administrators, teachers, and parents. The converse claim suggests boys and young men are not capable of controlling their own actions (even animals can be trained) – that should enrage young men.
Striking back at these claims, students at the Boston Latin School argue that dress codes perpetuate rape culture rather than prevent rape. Rather than making women less likely to be touched without their consent, the petition started by the students at Boston Latin School and those started by many other schools charged that by making girls responsible for boys’ behavior, “[the dress codes] contribute to rape culture where victims are blamed for dressing provocatively.” I would add that this logic also places young women in a dangerous position by allowing them to believe conversely that if they dress in the particular way demanded by the school—cover up, dress modestly (whatever this means), and so forth—that they will be safe from sexual violence, which we know to be false. Additionally, a 3rd party is invoked to stand in proxy for the boys who are distracted and the administrators who make the rules. Everyone in the school from the lunch lady to other classmates are deputized and pressed into service to enforce the dress codes.
Althusser’s theory warns us, and many women already know this from experience, that identifying and rejecting the ideology is not always easy. Considering the dress codes, we can also see how much these codes have been internalized. From buying clothes to deciding which clothes to wear that day, students are occupied, if not obsessed with the school dress code. Students who have acquiesced engage in self-surveillance. Yet, the opportunity for resistance is present nonetheless. Emerging from their protest of a dress code in New Jersey, several young women developed the hashtag #ImMoreThanADistraction, which quickly went viral. (Images 6 and 7
Linked to modesty, distraction, and non-consensual touching, the dress code is identified with sexual morality. The dress code communicates to these girls that by simply desiring to wear these forbidden articles of clothing, they are violating a moral norm and they should be ashamed. Having absorbed the message that certain articles of clothing are immodest or slutty, these young women often feel ashamed regardless simply for wanting to wear the clothes that violate the dress code. There must be something wrong with them, they think.
When students do wear this clothing to school, they either get coded and take the punishment or they spend their time crafting ways to avoid the school’s watchful eye. They enter through doors that are not monitored or they pull their skirts or shorts down just a little bit more. When the girls are singled out for their clothing, they wear the stigma of having violated a moral rule, of being guilty of a sexual transgression that is still present today in 2021. They might be asked to wear school-issued clothing—sometimes the clothing is a jumpsuit just like prisoners wear—or they might be given in-school suspension.
After numerous emails and meetings with principals, assistant principals, and representatives in the school board office, in 2015, just before my elder daughter entered 9th grade and my younger daughter entered 6th grade, I spoke to our school board during an open meeting. Confessing to them that I was intentionally wearing a dress that was by all accounts “professional,” but which also violated the school dress code (sleeveless and above my knee by more than the required length), I shared with them that the students do not believe the reasons they give nor do they believe that the school has their best interests at heart. I argued that the dress code increases the hypersexualization of girls in part by enlisting everyone to watch, regulate, and report on what girls are wearing. More people, not fewer, are now looking at my daughters’ thighs, knees, and shoulders.
Additionally, while they were busy policing clothing, they missed an opportunity to engage teenagers in discussions about issues of concern to them: body image, clothing expression, sexuality, shaming, gender and racial stereotypes, the influence of the media in hyper-sexualizing girls, and consensual touching. And finally, I asked them if they thought I was not capable of advising my own daughters about their choices in clothing.
My persistence forced the conversation among teachers and administrators. Interestingly, the district office, persuaded by my argument, could not persuade the teachers who remain the primary supporters of a dress code. Although a dress code remains in place officially, the district office asked the schools to relax their enforcement of the dress code and to consider safety as the overriding concern. Baby steps.
My elder daughter, now in college, faces the reality that women between 18 and 24 are at an elevated risk and women on college campuses at the highest risk for sexual violence. The ideology that undergirds the dress codes leads directly to this heightened risk of sexual violence. This ideology leads us still, in the 3rd decade of the 21st century, to ask a woman who is raped, “What were you wearing?” The sky is falling.
The Women in Philosophy series publishes posts on women in the history of philosophy, posts on issues of concern to women in the field of philosophy, and posts that put philosophy to work to address issues of concern to women in the wider world. If you are interested in writing for the series, please contact the Series Editor Adriel M. Trott or Associate Editor Julinna Oxley.
Claire Elise Katz
Claire Katz is Professor and Interim Department Head of Teaching, Learning, and Culture in the School of Education and Human Development at Texas A &M University, where she holds the title Presidential Professor for Teaching Excellence. She teaches and conducts research in two primary areas: (1) the intersection of philosophy, gender, education, and religion and (2) K-12 philosophy.
