CLASSROOM HUMOR

Dress for Success?

High school fashion and gravity don’t often mix and match

You can dress them up but you can’t take them out.

All high schools have what is known as a “dress code.” The edifice in which I taught for more than two decades is no different. Our Student Rights and Responsibilities Handbook — the “Bible,” after a fashion, listing all of the do’s and don’ts, what’s punishable and what’s not in student behavior— clearly (or not so clearly, depending on your point-of-view) states that “inappropriate” clothing Shall Not Be Worn by the teens matriculating within the building.

One of our past principals, whom many of us dubbed “Mickey Mouse” for a darn good reason, clarified our school’s dress code during his tenure by instituting a “Breasts, Bellies and Butts” Advisory. In other words, one’s clothing must not plunge too far, nor rise too much nor, in the case of the gentlemen, come too close to falling off.

Droopy Drawers meets his match.

As an aside to that last comment, several of us once witnessed the funniest enforcement of the sacred rules governing high school-eligible attire. One of our assistant principals — I’ll call him Mr. G., because that’s one of his initials — used to play in the NFL. The man was a pro defensive something-or-other, and he’s a pretty big guy, especially in relation to some of the little runts he rustled daily.

As Mr. G. walked down the Band Hallway in between classes one morning, he saw a youngun’ in flagrant violation of the Droopy Drawers Rule. Mr. G. sauntered up to the kid, grabbed him from behind on either side of his butt-crackers, and pulled his pantalones up to his armpits. In the process, Mr. G. jacked that boy about 2 or 3 feet off the ground. Pretty high-larious, if you ask moi. But of course, we had so little to amuse us at the time.

Defying gravity — no, not the song from “Wicked”.

So, back to the Triple-B rule. On occasion, unseasonably cool weather would prevent many dress code violations — I mean, who wants to bare some skin when it’s 45 degrees outside in May and the school’s AC has been cranked up for the season?

But the Sun always tends to Come Out Tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that, and so will the beach — aka, not “appropriate” for school — wear. As a teacher of the female persuasion, I was one of those tasked to speak with young women sporting scanty summer clothing in my classes.

I never figured out — and I promise that I’m not being sexist here — how some of those girls consistently defied gravity in their fashion choices.

As the Brits say, such cheeky behavior!

Have to admit that some of those convos, along with making both sides extremely uncomfortable, never achieved the desired result. The youngster would nod at appropriate intervals during our DCT (Dress Code Talk), then promise to do better. Then the next day, she’d show up in another version of Spring School Fashion, just slightly altered from her attire of previous days.

She’d change things up by wearing a piece of “clothing” — if you could call it that — which revealed a different part of her body than what we had discussed the day before.

If I’d previously mentioned that her “Daisy Dukes” were a tad too butt-cheeky, for example (never one to mince words, I recall employing that term a couple of times in my storied career), she’d grace the doorway of Room 215 the next day with totally “appropriate” shorts, or even a modest skirt. But there might be a slight “slippage” problem in her blousal area, as it were, necessitating another DCT.

Yeah, the months of April, May and June were not optimum learning times in our neck of the woods, if you’ll excuse the double entendre.

A lecherous old coot was my nemesis, back in the day.

Which brings me to a reflection on my own high school experience. No pants for the girls until senior year, and if we had double seams on the outside of our jeans (as was popular at the time in the Southwest, especially on Wranglers), we weren’t allowed to wear them to school at all. And boys? If their hair touched the tops of their collars, they were out, plain and simple.

In fact, when I first moved to Texas at the end of 8th grade, the lecherous old coot who called himself a principal would haul girls down to the office to measure the length of their skirts.

Let’s just say I was forever being sent to the Home Ec room to borrow the seam-ripper, then circling back to the Art room to borrow the masking tape to hike my skirt up even higher than before.

Whatever suits you probably won’t suit them.

A colleague once shared an article from her son’s middle-school newspaper about dress codes of the past. It alluded to the “typical High School in 1963". I’d like to share a few tidbits.

Boys: Long- or short-sleeved shirts, top buttoned or unbuttoned, or dress shirts and tie may be worn from September to Thanksgiving and from April vacation until June; sports coat or suit coat from Thanksgiving to April vacation; coat-style sweater, shirt and tie; any kind of sweater under a sports coat; trousers, clean and pressed; shoes, either desert boots (unclear on the reference), saddle shoes, loafers, or dress shoes. Hairstyles must be “reasonable” — whatever that means — and boys must be cleanly shaven.

Not acceptable for boys: Dungarees, peg-style, tight fitted trousers; soiled or wrinkled trousers; sneakers and engineering (what the heck are those?) boots; sweatshirts, and polos or T-shirts; string ties; trousers cuffs rolled to extreme.

Girls: Blouses, sweaters, jackets (blazers), jumpers, suits, dresses, shifts (w/ or w/o belts), and skirts. No extreme hairstyles such as beehives, unnaturally colored hair, mushrooms (huh?); no hairstyles extremely teased or feathered; no wigs or ornate jewelry; no heavy make-up, eye shadow, lipstick, or long fingernails.

Not acceptable for girls: Sneakers and sandals; V-necked sweaters without blouses; short skirts (above mid-knee); party-type dresses; slacks; shorts; tight sweaters or skirts; sweatshirts, or culottes.

We should make Physics a required course, shouldn’t we?

All I have to say is that if I tried to be this strict in Room 215, the powers-that-be would would have been very busy.

I have one solution, though, that might cut down on the number of DCTs in the halls of high schools these days. Make Physics a graduation requirement. Don’t they study gravity in that class?