Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Thou shall not show cleavage
Luanne Traud
Recent columns
- Marking a difficult anniversary
- My daughter, the voter
- A few new Voices would be nice
- A rush to legislate
From the RoundTable blog
I was scouting for the lone patch of shade at the Salem Fair on the Fourth of July when I happened to catch a glimpse of a teen sauntering by. As he passed, he reached down to his knees, grabbed hold of the waistband of his jeans and hiked them back up, landing about mid-butt.
He let go and by the time he paced off another 10 steps, he had to repeat the gesture. Two thoughts entered my mind: 1. In another 30 years, much to his chagrin, his waist will probably fit those jeans; 2. On such a sweltering day he'd have been better off wearing the boxer shorts without the denim accessory. Why not? Plenty of girls walk around in their bras, although not as many as in past summers.
Midriff baring seems to be on its way out, perhaps because few can wear this look, though many have tried. I am grateful for the passing of this fad. I find it difficult to enjoy a funnel cake when rolls of in-your-face blubber stroll by, reminding me, as if I need reminding, that my own belly is just a few moose-track waffle cones shy of enjoying sumo status.
Like legions of other adults who no longer bare knees or upper arms in public, I remain convinced that the problem with teens today is that they don't own enough full-length mirrors. Or they don't know how to use them.
That's why we have schools, or more specifically, why we have school dress codes. Now if we could just figure out how to clearly dictate fashion, we might be on to something. Instead, every school dress code is stuffed with ambiguity.
Take Franklin County, for example. The school board unanimously agreed to change the dress code to clarify what it meant by stating shirts can show no cleavage and hemlines may not be higher than mid-thigh when a skirt wearer sits. Apparently, not everyone understands the meaning of cleavage, so the board opted to use the more universal word "breast." OK, but what about the boys and their butt cleavage? Surely the board wishes to cover their rear ends as well.
Keeping things covered -- the aim of any school dress code worth its tortuous language -- is tricky. Franklin County has found the issue of hemlines particularly taxing.
They are not alone. I recall the policy that governed my older girls' high school: One's hemline could not reach higher than one's fingertips when one's hands dangled at one's side. This worked rather well until one girl with particularly long legs and short arms arrived in a micro-mini and, much to the chagrin of the principal, was found to have committed no infraction.
Franklin County hopes to avoid lengthy arguments over short hemlines. The board clarified its intent by not only banning skirts, shorts and the like that rise more than 3 inches above the knee, but it also plans to mail 3-by-5-inch index cards to each household so legs can be measured before boarding the school bus.
I do hope they remember to mark the cards as to which end is up. Even then, the county is in for a round of arguments as the 3-inch rule applies whether the wearer sits or stands. Unless Franklin County girls have mastered sitting without sacrificing coverage, they might as well plan, as board member G.B. Washburn said, on wearing clothes past their knees.
Wait ... that's how the Salem fair-goer wore his pants.
See, this is exactly why it is so difficult to dress these codes in the right language.
School boards make these things far too complicated. They could make life much simpler for themselves and students with a one-word dress code: uniforms.
Traud is a member of The Roanoke Times editorial board.
