Cracking The (Dress) Code
September 30, 2004

Everyone despairs over the trampy state of girls' fashion. Administrators rail against trendy clothing among teen and pre-teen school girls—belly-baring, butt-revealing form-hugging jeans, skimpy or see-through tops, provocative piercings in formerly private places. Blame it on Madonna, wearing her underwear on the outside. Blame it on J-Lo's peekaboo gowns, or Brittney's prancing, booty-shaking videos. Whatever the reason, girls' clothing is ruled these days by the if-you've-got-it-(and even if you don't)-flaunt-it mentality.

Back in the Dark Ages when I was in high school, we were embroiled in a similar fashion controversy. We were battling for the right to cover up.

I was a senior in high school from the fall of 1969 to the spring of 1970, turbulent political times in which we felt we had a stake, even though we were too young to vote. Our brothers and sisters in college were marching against the Vietnam War, chanting, "Hell no, we won't go!" or "What do we want? Peace! When do we want it? Now!" But we were expected to channel our energies into football pep rallies, chanting slogans like "Beat the Birds!" or "Kill the Cats!" or otherwise pummel the designated gridiron enemy of the week.

Even at my WASP, middle-class suburban high school, there were those of us who considered ourselves hippie activists out to subvert the system. We published an alternative campus newspaper (run off on the office mimeo machine), which we handed out in front of the school one morning. An article on the front page was emblazoned with the title "Amerika" after the Franz Kafka novel, and a young motorcycle cop who pulled up to keep us from blocking the sidewalk chuckled that "somebody doesn't know how to spell." Our sense of dislocation from the real world was just about complete.

We knew we were powerless little cogs in the huge, grinding wheels of national events. But if we couldn't hope to stop the wheels, we could at least toss a little grit into the works on a local level. And our issue was clothes.

Kids who go to school with exposed pierced navels probably can't imagine what it was like to have a school dress code. Boys' hair could not reach their collars. Rulers were employed to measure the length of sideburns and skirt hems. Worst of all, girls were forbidden to wear pants. We found this extremely arbitrary; some throwback injunction from the days of high-button shoes when trousers were considered unladylike. One administrator told us girls in pants would be too "distracting" for the boys—unlike, say, girls in miniskirts that rode up to the Mason/Dixon Line whenever they sat down. To our way of thinking, pants were easy and practical, and got us out of the house a lot faster. (Especially if, like me, you were accustomed to rolling out of bed about 7.5 minutes before the first class bell rang.) Besides, even in Southern California there are occasional days of cold, rain, and especially fog. Hell, they were lucky we showed up in class at all, we reasoned, no matter what we wore.

What did we want? Pants. When did we want 'em? Now.

Disobeying the dress code meant an immediate trip to the Girls or Boys Vice Principal, and some sort of black spot on one's dreaded Permanent Record. Nevertheless, during a chilly week in January, a bunch of us radicals decided to put our permanent records on the line and act in solidarity to protest the code. Without fanfare, we chose a day in which girls would simply wear pants to school. Word was spread surreptitiously in P. E. classes and during snack break and lunch: tomorrow was P-Day.

In those days I owned (and actually wore) a wool poncho in a yellow, brown, and black plaid, highly prized by me because, as they say, it covered a multitude of sins. The front and back points reached almost to my knees, and on the day of our protest, I threw on a pair of jeans underneath and trudged off, blissfully free of pantyhose, tights, or excess ventilation up the backside. I attended my first two morning classes without incident; the heavens did not crack asunder, nor did the boys turn into slavering loons. (Well, no more than usual.) It wasn't until third period that anyone even noticed my illicit costume, my art teacher, who dutifully sent me to the Girls Vice Principal.

There was a scene of pandemonium. Girls in pants had been parading in and out of her office all morning, banished from classrooms all over the school. At a certain point, it was no longer feasible to send all of us home to change; the Girls VP went home at lunch instead, wounded to the core by so much wholesale defiance. But not before she had a chance to snipe at me: in highly affronted tones, she exclaimed, "Your parents taught you to obey!"

Of course, my parents did no such thing. They taught me to think for myself. I would have told her so, too, had I only thought of it at the time. It's one of those perfect ripostes that haunt you the rest of your life.

Still, we carried our point. The dress code was abolished at the next faculty meeting, although they refused to put it into effect until the following school year, after most of us troublemakers had graduated. They wouldn't give us the satisfaction. But pioneers, like prophets, are often without honor in their own house. We were glad to do our part for future generations.