Dress Codes

Con 1: Dress codes reinforce racist standards of beauty and dress.

As the National Women’s Law Center summarized, “Black girls face unique dress and hair code burdens. For example, some schools ban styles associated with Black girls and women, like hair wraps. Black girls also face adults’ stereotyped perceptions that they are more sexually provocative because of their race, and thus more deserving of punishment for a low-cut shirt or short skirt.” [30]

Assistant Superintendent and Principal of Evanston Township High School Marcus Campbell spoke about changing an outdated dress code: “If certain females were not a certain body type, if they had more curves or they had certain features that were developed, they were dress coded over another young lady who may not have the same features but were wearing the exact same items. Our young women of color were dress coded more than our white girls were. So we found it to be racist, we found it to be sexist, we found it to be antiquated. It was not body positive, and there was just trouble all around with our dress code, and we knew we needed to make a change.” [31]

Banning traditionally Black hairstyles goes back at least to tignon laws passed after emancipation, which required Black women to cover their hair with scarves (tignons) so as to not compete with white women. But these rules continue today as Black girls and women aren’t always allowed to wear their hair in braids, locs, or other styles suitable to Black hair texture at school or work. [7][32]

Black male students are often “dress coded” at schools for hoodies, low-rise or baggy pants, and do-rags. Black boys were also more likely to be disciplined (suspended, for example) for a dress code violation than non-Black students. [33]

As Dialectic, a company that counsels workplaces, concluded, “Traditional dress codes work to police certain kinds of bodies. They ensure that employees follow the practices of the dominant culture. Under the guise of professionalism, dress codes tend to punish marginalized groups of employees for refusing to conform.” [34]

Con 2: Mandated dress codes are seldom uniformly mandated, often discriminating against women and marginalized groups.

The average dress code, whether for a school, workplace, public transportation, or other location, includes more rules for how girls and women should dress than how boys and men should dress.[35][36]

Girls in school are frequently “dress-coded” for “too short” shorts and skirts, “too thin” tank top straps, leggings, and other clothing that might be a “distraction to boys.” [36]

Fourth-grade teacher ​​Marci Kutzer said these rules send a clear message to girls: “A boy’s education can be compromised by your gender. Please do what you can to neutralize it.” [36]

The problems follow women into the workplace. A leaked training presentation from Ernst & Young coached women to “look healthy and fit” with a “good haircut, manicured nails, well-cut attire that complements your body type,” but not to wear too-short skirts because “sexuality scrambles the mind.” [37]

Dress codes also frequently exclude transgender and gender-nonconforming people as well as those outside of the gender binary and may force them to adhere to the codes for their sex assigned at birth. [35][38]

Journalist Li Zhou explained, “Transgender students have been sent home for wearing clothing different than what’s expected of their legal sex, while others have been excluded from yearbooks. Male students, using traditionally female accessories that fell within the bounds of standard dress code rules, and vice versa, have been nonetheless disciplined for their fashion choices.” Similarly, the Ernst & Young training excluded nonbinary and gender-nonconforming people. [35][37]

Con 3: Dress codes bolster religious and cultural intolerance.

Only in 2019 did the U.S. Congress change the 1837 rule that banned headwear of any sort, including religious headwear such as kippahs (yarmulkes), hijabs, and turbans. [39]

While the United States protects religious expression and cannot ban religious wear as France has banned burkas and hijabs, American dress codes frequently use acceptability standards to less explicitly ban religious garb. [9][40][41]

A five-year-old Native American boy in Texas was sent home for a dress code violation because he wore his hair in a long braid according to tribal religious code, which states hair must not be cut except when in mourning. And a Georgia State Representative tried (and failed) to add hijabs, niqabs, and burkas to an existing antimasking law originally aimed at the Klu Klux Klan (KKK). [42][43]

Until sued by Tvli Birdshead, then a high school senior and a member of five Native American tribes, the Latta School District in Oklahoma refused to allow Native American regalia on graduation day, which for Birdshead meant a Chickasaw Nation honor cord, a beaded cap, and a sacred eagle feather. The Native American Rights Fund has long battled to protect the cultural and religious rights of Native Americans against discriminatory school dress codes. [44][45]