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.
Last week, a cross-dressing Houston senior was sent home because his wig violated the school’s dress-code rule that a boy’s hair may not be “longer than the bottom of a regular shirt collar.” Last month, officials at a high school in Cobb County, Georgia, sent home a boy who favored wigs, make-up 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, with students coming 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 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 anti-discrimination policies, mental health factors, community standards and classroom distractions.
And safety is a critical concern. In February last year, Lawrence King, an eighth-grader from Oxnard, California, who occasionally wore high-heeled boots and makeup, was shot to death in class by another student.
Although dress code disputes are largely anecdotal, popping up in the news when a lawsuit threat emerges, educators and psychologists say that more schools will have to address them in the near future. There are 4,118 gay-straight alliance clubs in high schools across the US, which raise awareness of such issues. Gender-boundary questions are even bubbling up in elementary schools, with parents seeking to pave the way for their children, in blogs like acceptingdad.com and labelsareforjars.wordpress.com.
At minimum, more students are trying on their curiosity for size. Typically during “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 co-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.”
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