Dress Code Distractions

This is not the kind of topic I'd normally write about, since it's been covered to death in national media, but a recent news item brought up several ideas and memories for me related to education and teaching. A high school recently gained national attention when it was revealed that the yearbook advisor had photoshopped a number of girls' photos that she decided were too revealing. The negative attention was well deserved, to say the least. It seems right, as the critics have said, that the controversy sheds light on a long-running tendency of dress codes to be biased against girls and that the additional attention brought on the girls by the editing only reinforced ideas about body shaming.

These dress codes are often defended, as they were in this case, as helping to avoid "distractions," which places the responsibility squarely on the girls for the behavior and mindset of boys. We can do a better job of educating young men to be respectful.

Here's me in high school, not violating dress codes but clearly needing some wardrobe assistance. 

The editing itself, besides sending the wrong message about shame, was also poorly done and represented a violation in and of itself -- changing someone's image without their permission. It reminded me of one of the first ideas I learned in a college photography class when discussing the ethics of photography: while there are legal guidelines about what photos you are allowed to take and who is allowed to edit them, there are also ethical concerns and even possible legal violations with photographing and/or misrepresenting people. In my long-ago photography class, the instructor told us how Native Americans sometimes viewed their photographs as a kind of "stealing of the spirit" and were very reluctant to be photographed in the early days of photography. As I recall, being cocky young people, we sort of laughed at the corny way in which this professor presented this idea, but I also remembered the general fact (which apparently is true, and some Native Americans still resist being photographed) long after learning it. She was a good instructor, and I'm embarassed to remember my attitude in that class.

The idea of girls' outfits being "distracting" also reminded me of how long this discussion has been going on, and it brought to mind a certain uncomfortable moment in my high-school precalculus class. I don't remember the teacher's name, but he was middle-aged man who had worked as an engineer and was now teaching math to high schoolers. (But he was no Jaime Escalante.) For some reason, before class started, the girls were talking about the dress code and the prohibition on skirts above the knee. The teacher, who was standing at the front of the room, with an obvious vantage point that made his comment quite unnerving, offered that too-short skirts were in fact "distracting" for him as well as for the male students. He said this matter-of-factly, as if to say "don't you realize I'm a male with normal sexual drives standing up here?"

The entire class, including the boys, tittered uncomfortably but also objected vaguely, as if we wondered what right this older male had to make such a comment. This was the 1980s, of course, so we didn't expect any repurcussions; it's hard to imagine a teacher these days making such a comment, even he thought it was true, without some serious blowback. And if he thought it was true, perhaps he should have been focusing more on improving his habits of mind; while you can't control your thoughts and emotions all the time, you can practice a more Buddhist-like attitude of steering your thoughts in certain positive directions, which in turn improves your actions and your life.

I wonder about this teacher's thoughts, actions, and attitudes. He didn't like me very much, because I had a habit of falling asleep in class. The class was right after lunch, and his droning lectures were no match for the effect that lunch of a chicken-supreme sandwich, a peanut-butter bar, and a Coca-Cola had on my system. He would try to embarass me by saying nasty things about my future to wake me up. This of course only tended to make him look petty and make the other students sympathize with me. 

I still did reasonably well in the class, as I recall, at least well enough to place out of the course for my first year of college. It was the 1980s, as I said, so I'm not surprised he did nothing to help me. Teachers were still then, for the most part, largely figures of authority, though of course there were caring and empathetic teachers as well. So the questions are rhetorical, but I wonder why he didn't ask what was wrong with me, question whether I was depressed or getting enough sleep. I wonder (but again, not really) why he didn't take more of an interest in helping me or maybe even just pointing to some resources to help me make better dietary choices and help me to avoid crashing in his class. (Of course, there was never any consideration of the possibility that he was too boring.)

The two memories of a high school versus a college teacher also point to some still-remaining important differences in their roles. College teachers can be caring and should point students to resources when they can, but they don't see the students every day, and they don't know them as well. And the students are older and at least ostensibly adults, so they shoulder more of the responsibility for their own lives and their own academic success (even in a boring class). Dress codes have always struck me as being dangerous in their trivial nature; they presume to fix more than they do and really just continue the K-12 tradition of teaching students to be compliant. Why are we worried about what students are wearing if they aren't learning, and do we really think the distractions of certain clothing choices (or god forbid, long hair) are more important than poor diet or lack of sleep when it comes to learning? Quite obviously, we have done nothing to alter school schedules after compiling decades of evidence that adolescents are not getting enough sleep and should not be going to school at 7 a.m., and in fact we keep piling on the commitments. The only real explanation -- a very poor one -- that I've heard for this lack of change is the fact that it would make the circulation of school buses impossible. 

(Afternote: When I've taught at dual-credit locations in recent years, I've noticed how much more relaxed the dress codes in Texas are these days compared to what they were in my youth. Boys sport beards, and everybody wears shorts. Thank god for that kind of positive progress. Shorts are pretty darn necessary in Houston during certain months. On the other hand, the soda machines and poor food choices remain, as far as I can tell, and now students can bring coffee to school!)