Stereotyping in School Dress Codes
By Pooja Shah
It was a regular assembly morning in kindergarten. Usually, at the end of such mornings, we would learn a poem, be it about fruits or animals. Considering that this was almost 10 years ago, I shouldn’t be able to recall much anyway. However, I do remember one specific extract vividly, from a poem about colours.
“Boys wear blue,
Girls wear pink,
Be it at the zoo,
Or even at the rink!”
It brazenly cited a stereotype and indoctrinated us into believing that these colours were meant for a specific gender only. Learning such things in my formative years prepared me for a world with two genders. Male and Female. I never bothered to educate myself about the terms “gay” or “non-binary”, until the recent past. The fact is that everyone is not the same. Everyone doesn’t feel the same. Everyone doesn’t look the same. Some don’t want to look the same. And some don’t want to dress the same. Hence, in my opinion, having selected dress codes at schools and universities does not do justice to its students’ personalities.
All schools have a uniform policy that is to follow government equality guidelines, which state that uniforms must meet the needs of and should not discriminate – gender and gender reassignment. The majority of private schools limit girls to only wearing skirts. This is an example of a gendered dress- ensuring that it separates males and females in an obvious way, suggesting that trousers are solely for boys and skirts are solely for girls. Some schools with strict dress codes often claim that such regulations prevent in-class distractions and create a workplace-like environment. However, in an age of easy internet access, controversies are cropping up over whether excluding students from the classroom for violating dress codes is necessary, and whether such rules are disproportionately enforced against girls. Dress codes encourage modest apparel, but by doing this they are also encouraging overly restrictive, and often sexist, gender norms of past centuries.
Educators and sociologists have argued that dress codes grounded in such logic may also amplify a broader societal expectation- that women are the ones who need to protect themselves from unwanted attention.
Gender non-conforming students have also clashed with similar policies- that the authorities rigidly dictate how kids express their identities. Transgender students have been sent home for wearing clothing different from what’s expected of their legal sex. These cases are prompting their backlash.
On a personal note, skirts weren’t comfortable for my female peers and me back at school. We often felt uncomfortable and found it hard to focus- with the constant thought, “What if it slides up?”. We always wondered why trousers were restricted to boys. Somewhere inside me, there was a serious urge to raise this question. In fact, I did bring this up in conversations with my friends quite a few times. However, I was somehow convinced that this was normal when I got responses like, “You’re being paranoid”, “Don’t overthink it” or “We can’t do anything, so why bother?”. They felt that they would reach a dead end if they were to pursue this thought and moved past it. It’s really sad how we call ourselves citizens of a developing world- working towards equality on a global scale, with low to no emphasis on “Accurate Gender Education” in a person’s formative years. Wearing uniformed clothing according to one’s personal choice should be normalized. Be it a trans man wearing a skirt or a bisexual girl wearing trousers.
So, how is India dealing with this situation?
“When she was in school, Noida-based online content creator Swati Sen was horrified when a teacher lifted her skirt to check if she was wearing shorts underneath. “The same teacher used to also grab our shirts to see if we wore a slip inside. It was humiliating.”
For us, they had kurta-pyjama with dupatta, and for men, they wanted them to be dressed in formals — no uniform, but a dress code,” she laughed.
Current gendered dress codes are unfair and uncomfortable, not just for non-binary or transgender, but also for male and female students. Instead of tinkering with specific rules or training teachers to enforce this dress code better, a different type of dress code is needed that helps schools and students to challenge dominant narratives of who they are or could be. The world is going through a lot right now- with people having trouble agreeing on anything. However, the right to one’s self-expression should not depend on one’s gender, and it should be something that everyone can agree on.