Our mornings are always hectic. If I need to go to the office, she must take the bus to school. Between preparing breakfast and lunches, there’s not much time for surprises and even last-minute permission forms are annoyances to our locked-down morning routine. One morning she came down the stairs wearing something that was backless and the front barely covered her midriff. “You can’t wear that to school. Don’t even try to argue with me and go back upstairs and put on something appropriate for school. Going out like that, you might as well paperclip two doilies together.” What’s a doily? She asked. “It’s what your grandma used to knit to cover the house phone.” Ewwww. “Yes, my thought exactly, but for different reasons.”
As we wolfed down our breakfast, I barked out that she must wear something that is acceptable for school and that she must treat school like her workplace. I asked if she ever saw me go to work in a tank top. She didn’t answer but her silence was a softening of her indignant stance. I go to work in a very well presented, disarming way. If my daughter is to be treated as a trusted friend who is smart, social and well-balanced, there is no need to bare skin.
Going out like that, you might as well paperclip two doilies together.
Back when she was in Waldorf school, she was forbidden to wear light up shoes or branded clothing. Whether it was a policy to discourage consumerism or encourage equality as some kids’ parents may not be able to afford branded clothing, the end result is that everyone needs to adhere to a standard in this private institution. In a private school, especially two friends she knows who attend Catholics school, they have uniforms to ensure that they represent the school’s pride and traditional. In public high school, that standard can be too interpretative, but norms of others (or lack thereof) should not impact our own sense of identity. In the lack of such standards at my daughter’s school, it’s even more important that she be her own model: dressing up like a party girl may be fun, but it is not her default persona. And that’s not the reason she’s at school.
It is unfortunate that people judge a book by its cover; we all judge based on a person’s dress. We take for granted that a man in a law enforcement uniform is an authority and a woman in a white lab coat to be a physician. We don’t even question personnel walking about with construction vests, hard hats and boots. And if they have a clipboard, well, they literally go anywhere in a building including sensitive areas unchallenged. And if others are making up their minds based on the way we dress, shouldn’t we, the dresser, be more careful in what message we want to broadcast? I don’t want to be sexist, but we do live in a world where some feel they can take liberties.
We ended our quick breakfast in the morning only to continue it during dinner. She admitted that if she had gone to school in the first outfit, she would have frozen as the heater in her classrooms broke that day. “Well, that’s not the only reason, but I’m glad you realized that each outfit has a utility and broadcasts its own message that could be different from your intent.”
“Let’s sit down and have dinner,” I said. She agreed but she wanted to change first into pajama pants and oversized hoodie. “Guess this tells me that you’re gonna chill and go to bed after dinner, right?” Yah!
