The prestigious, elite, and mostly white all-boys Catholic high school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan I attended next was, surprisingly, different: the relaxed dress code called only for a
collared shirt, and allowed me to start to figure out what I wanted to wear—and who I wanted to be. This wasn’t a painless experience. As I started wearing pop punk polos and Kurt Cobain-inspired flannels, people began to notice me for who I actually was: a Black person who did not fit in. While the boys I went to school with felt comfortable in the Brooks Brothers dress shirts and blazers I would see college professors wearing on TV, I was made fun of for my Rocawear polo. The sense of dislocation wasn’t limited to school: when I’d wear a flannel shirt, my father would joke that they made me look “like a white boy.”
When I became an educator myself, I understood the imposition of a dress code to be a sensitive topic. It isn’t just a rule—it’s a way to teach students what is and isn’t ok, explicitly and implicitly. I’m still exploring my own relationship to institutional dressing: as I move up within the educational world, I continue to fight the notion, illustrated by the white standards of beauty our dress codes so often reinforce, that loccs are messy and unkempt. The hair on my head, the black Vans on my feet, the straight-from-the-bowling-league button ups: these are creative tools for me, and for my students.
Given all of this, I was struck by a Texas school district’s decision to make masks a part of their dress code, in hopes of counteracting the state’s ban on mask mandates. The school uniform, I realized, was being utilized in an act of protest. I was reminded of the way the NBA dress code famously ushered in a new era for fashion, both in the league and in the broader menswear world. The NBA had instituted the rule in an attempt to force players to fit a desired image—and the players responded by simultaneously adhering to it and subverting it, creating a new paradigm for how men dress “formally.” I wore my pop-punk polos and grungy flannels in the same spirit—and it’s in that lineage that I’ve brought Flannel Fridays to every educational institution I’ve spent time at since high school.
Most mornings you’ll always have a kid trying to sneak in with Crocs, or pushing the boundaries of what constitutes black sneakers. You even have that one student that completely changes into dress code upon arrival, like clocking in and out of a job you don’t want people to know you have. No one, however, ever tries to skirt around a mask. After the first week, the handful of kids annoyed by the simple ask had given up their silent protest. It’s more likely a student will ask where to find extras than to show up maskless. Perhaps they’re just teenagers self-conscious about their faces, or they’re more worried about remote school again, with no access to friends, than about wearing a face covering. Regardless, I’d rather debate the “expensive is professional” teenage Jordan aficionado than a student without a mask.
Young people, regardless of their weird clothes, baffling hair styles, or costume jewelry, deserve the same access to a high quality education. The line between “classy” and “oppressive” is thin enough to warrant debate, student voice, and change over time. But we can disagree on all of that. One thing educators and academics must always center, though, is the health and safety of those under our guidance, along with the importance of public health. Adding a mask to the dress code won’t fix the many issues that arise from telling young people that there’s one way to dress. But for now, doing so will allow us to understand the dress code as permitting not uniformity of appearance, but a mutual concern for each other’s well being.