It's complicated. But we can do hard things.
“Is that what you're wearing?” I asked my fourteen-year-old daughter recently.
“Yeah,” she said. “I'm just going to hang out.”
“Maybe put a sweater on?”
“You're dress coding me. Seriously? After everything you said?”
One of the hardest things as a parent is when you slam up against the absolute clarity of a teen's strict moral compass and are found wanting. Another hard thing is when you believe societies function better when rules are followed, but some rules then damage the very people they are meant to protect.
Teens often demonstrate their belief they are the ultimate authorities of right and wrong. Their ability to zero in on rules that don't make sense, call out outdated values, and sense social inequality can be exhausting, but it’s important for them, and for us.
My piece in Motherwell Magazine is a revised version of one I wrote for CBC, about dress codes in education. I don't believe they serve us, but it's complicated.
Dress codes are common. Offices have them. Some restaurants do. We have official rules, and unspoken rules. All enforced, at times subtly (peer pressure) and less so (policy).
Clothes make the man, say the ads, and we both enjoy and succumb to fashion, to judgements of taste and style.
But what purpose does the flagging of inappropriate serve? And who defines these things? It's telling, how the hauling in of these young women to the office happens, summoned to face what is usually a man. It's frightening to hear teens talk when they don't think I'm listening, identifying which male teacher "up and downed” them in the hall, or the sympathetic female teacher telling them them it had been made clear. There was to be no tolerance for any violations.
It's scarier still to talk to mothers so furious they have not been able to approach the school after their daughters called them, sobbing hysterically, telling their moms they’re being sent home to change. It's infuriating to hear fathers rage about their daughters being sexualized in a place we presumed safe.
And here I was, doing the same thing to my daughter.
I reasoned with myself. It's a matter of appropriate, I thought. But defined by whom? And why am I - or anyone else - the arbiter of this body I've told her over and over is her own?
We live in a world we tolerate. We helped build. We bought them earrings and lip glosses and let them sink into their phones during lockdowns because what else did they have? We told them it would get better, that it is getting better. And after telling them their whole lives that their bodies are their own, we shame them. We tell them to cover up, put on a sweater, do up the button. Why? Because women’s bodies are policed, a thing easier to do the more we do it, a thing easier to bear if we toe lines, ensure others do. What better way to break a spirit than the slow drip of humiliation? How best to prime her for a lifetime of being an object than to turn her into one as she walks the halls of the place we assured her was safe?
This is all hard. But the hardest thing? Realizing this: I was wrong. I had no right, no business, no moral superiority to tell her to change. I told her that not for her, but for me.
I've written about my work in the service industry and its focus on female attire. Am I priming my daughters to take direction from authority figures instead of self-determining? Does the power given to schools - that of regulating student's identities - translate to establishing that others are responsible for imposing their values as ours, instead of teaching students to develop their own?
I think it does.
What if we created space for our children to sort this complicated thing on their own? Consider the impact of social media on their choices? Think about how clothes are marketed to them, and why?
Rules are important. As is learning good judgement, and to question when conventions don’t serve us. The Conversation, part of BBC Life’s Big Questions, offers nuanced thinking about rules:
“Humans have a powerful sense of wanting to enforce, sometimes oppressive, patterns of behaviour – correct spelling, no stranded prepositions, no split infinitives, hats off in church, standing for the national anthem – irrespective of their justification. And while the shift from "this is what we all do" to "this is what we all ought to do" is a well-known ethical fallacy, it is deeply embedded in human psychology.
One danger is that rules can develop their own momentum: people can become so fervent about arbitrary rules of dress, dietary restrictions or the proper treatment of the sacred that they may exact the most extreme punishments to maintain them.
Political ideologues and religious fanatics often mete out such retribution – but so do repressive states, bullying bosses and coercive partners: the rules must be obeyed, just because they are the rules.
Rules, like good policing, rely on our consent
Not only that, but criticising rules or failing to enforce them (not to draw attention to a person wearing inappropriate dress, for example) becomes a transgression requiring punishment itself.” Read the full piece here.
Sometimes, there are no easy answers. Acknowledging that can make it clear. No easy answer is the point, and why autonomy and critical thinking skills are what kids need. Not dress codes.
They've masked. They've stayed home. They've locked themselves away from the world, from each other, from everything. For us. We owe them. We owe them to lift them up. We owe them support. We owe them respect, self-determination, the truth. That their bodies are their own. That they - old enough to drive cars and write beautiful poems and throw footballs and dance and sing - are old enough to select their attire. To adorn themselves with colour and material and fit as they desire. To be beautiful or bold, fashionable, or not. Most of all, we owe them constructive conversations, rather than old-fashioned dogma. No five-year-old should worry about the strap width of her tank top. And when she enters high school, she should be free, to choose her clothing, and from the idea her body is a distraction.