Dress Codes

Clothing is not merely something that we put on as protection from the elements. What we wear defines us in the eyes of others. We can be casual, formal, semi-formal, businesslike, active, leisurely, smart, attractive, sexy, frumpy, and on and on. Since we use clothes to define ourselves, it's not surprising that others want to mandate the type of clothing we wear in order to conform us to some preconceived notion.

We begin at birth to be defined by what we wear when pink caps are given to girls and blue to boys. Uniformity is the way to go in religious organizations, fraternal groups, the military, and in some schools. While this conformity is mostly successful in the homogenization of people, it is the nature of human beings to struggle for individuality, to break out from the textile facade and rise above the fray. The more individuals attempt to stand out, the more authority tends to suppress.

The example of the two high school girls in Florida, who were kicked out of a football game for painting their torsos in school colors and wearing shorts and bikini tops, is a prime example of authoritarian forced conformity. While the incident is clearly a case of sex discrimination (boys were allowed to be shirtless and painted at games), the principal and other school officials all say that what the girls did was against the dress codes and the banishment was appropriate, and they are making some of the most ridiculous arguments in support of their position.

John Bowen, school board attorney, said the code also applies to school-related extracurricular activities, and that the principal has discretion on how to enforce the rules.

As to the girls' attire at the homecoming game, Bowen said some people complained to Manatee High administrators, saying the girls looked topless from afar.

"If the principal doesn't take any action, rumor would run amok saying that the girls were topless," Bowen said. "Fortunately, they got a lot of publicity, so no one thought they were running around topless."

Bowen offered an opposite scenario.

If a male student wearing spandex shorts and paint in a color that appears indistinguishable from the clothing appears nude from a distance, a principal would have the right to send him home, too, he said.

"It's not an unequal treatment," he said.

Merely stating that something is "not unequal" does not make it so. Remember "Mission Accomplished'? This attorney is actually arguing that even a slight hint of the appearance of nudity is a violation of the dress code. That would mean that anybody wearing a shirt the color of his or her skin would be asked to cover up? The argument is beyond untenable. These girls were singled out and banished from the game because they were female, and all this backpeddling and fumbling for justification only makes the matter more ridiculous.

Braden River High principal Jim Pauley said he would not allow any students to go shirtless at home games.

"We do not allow them take their shirts off," he said. "If we see it, we ask them to cover up or leave."

Will there be a districtwide policy in the future?

"The question is something (the school board) will have to deal with, or the superintendent can direct a uniform treatment," Bowen said.

Pauley said having a set of dress codes for extracurricular activities may not be a bad idea.

"Maybe it would help people to be more consistent," he said.

This last statement is quite astonishing. Trying to force people to be more "consistent" is a communist principle, to mandate conformity in order to abolish class distinctions and individualism.

The action of the girls was also called a "distraction" and "inappropriate". This was a football game, not a lecture on physics. Football games are supposed to be fun, a time when the students can let go a little bit and express themselves as people. The intent of events like football games is to provide a distraction from academics. What are the cheerleaders doing in their short skirts and pom poms? They are providing a distraction, and their dress is clearly "inappropriate" for the classroom.

The real tragedy here is that the school authorities are defending themselves for taking action on something that only appeared to be inappropriate, that from a distance the girls only "appeared" to be topless, and someone complained. Now the school is talking about dress codes for all extracurricular activities, so the all of students will end up being punished because the school overreacted to a non-incident. Such is the nature of bureaucracy - when faced with an error, it tends to err even more in order to justify the initial mistake.

Dress codes are the complete opposite of nudism. Nudists believe when one sheds all clothing, one also sheds the burdens and definitions imposed by society. Nudism is neither capitalist nor communist - it is a form of humanism, a search for truth and morality by returning to a more natural state of man. Telling people what they can wear, and when they can wear it, only serves to falsify who and what we truly are.

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