Gender Bends the Dress Code for Students

2010-01-06 (수) 12:00:00

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By JAN HOFFMAN

By now, most high school dress codes have just about done away with the guesswork.

Girls: no midriff-baring blouses, stiletto heels, miniskirts.
Boys: no sagging pants, muscle shirts.
But do the math.

“Rules” + “teenager” = “challenges.”
If the skirt is an acceptable length, can a boy wear it?
Can a girl attend her prom in a tuxedo?

In recent years, a growing number of teenagers have been dressing to articulate ? or confound ? gender identity and sexual orientation. Certainly they have been confounding school officials, whose responses have ranged from indifference to applause to bans.

Recently, a cross-dressing Houston senior was sent home because his wig violated the school’s rule that a boy’s hair may not be “longer than the bottom of a regular shirt collar.” In October, a high school in Cobb County, Georgia, sent home a boy who favored wigs, makeup and skinny jeans. In August, a Mississippi student’s senior portrait was barred from her yearbook because she had posed in a tuxedo.

Other schools are more accepting of unconventional gender expression. In September, a freshman girl at Rincon High School in Tucson who identifies as male was nominated for homecoming prince. Last May, a gay male student at a Los Angeles high school was crowned prom queen.

Dress code conflicts often reflect a generational divide, as students come of age in a culture that is more accepting of ambiguity and difference than that of the adults who make the rules.

“This generation is really challenging the gender norms we grew up with,” said Diane Ehrensaft, an Oakland, California, psychologist who writes about gender. “A lot of youths say they won’t be bound by boys having to wear this or girls wearing that. For them, gender is a creative playing field.” Adults, she added, “become the gender police through dress codes.”

Dress is always code, particularly for teenagers eager to telegraph evolving identities. Each year, schools hope to quell disruption by prohibiting the latest styles that signify a gang affiliation, a sexual act or drug use.

But when officials want to discipline a student whose wardrobe expresses sexual orientation or gender variance, they must consider antidiscrimination policies, mental health factors and community standards. And safety is a critical concern. In 2008, Lawrence King, an eighth-grader from Oxnard, California, who occasionally wore high-heeled boots and makeup, was shot to death by another student.

Educators and psychologists say more schools will have to address dress code disputes in the near future. There are 4,118 gay-straight alliance clubs in high schools across America . Gender-boundary questions are even bubbling up in elementary schools .

At minimum, more students are trying on their curiosity for size. On “Mix ‘n’ Match Day” at Ramapo High School in Spring Valley, New York, students might wear polka dots with stripes, said Diane Schneider, a teacher who is a chairwoman of the Hudson Valley chapter of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network. But this year, she said, “about 50 kids came as cross-dressers.”

All this is too much for some educators, who say high school should not be a public stage to work out private identity issues. School, they say, is a training ground for the world of adults and employment. “It’s hard enough to get kids to concentrate on an algorithm - even without Jimmy sitting there in lipstick and fake eyelashes,” said Kay Hymowitz, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

Because schools are communal, she wrote in an e-mail message, “self-expression will always have to be at least partially limited, just as it is in the workplace.” Principals need leeway in determining how students present themselves, she added. “You can understand why a lot of principals get fed up with these sorts of fights and just decide on school uniforms.”

Dress codes should be enforced consistently, with measures also taken against straight students who dress provocatively, said Diane Levin, a professor at Wheelock College in Boston who writes about the sexualization of young children.

But whether a principal bans gender- blurring clothing, she said, the student cannot be abandoned. Why has the student chosen to dress this way? “Is the student sensation-seeking?” Dr. Levin asked. “Can the school keep the student safe?”

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