Please complete the following sentence:
Clothes are...
a) the only thing standing between me and a highly embarrassing episode of public nudity.
b) an important tool of self-expression.
c) something school administrators will give themselves ulcers trying to control.
d) all of the above.
If you answered “d”, then you're on the right track! (Although option “a” could be made moot through the creative Adam-and-Eve-style use of a fig leaf to cover your business. Not that we are suggesting you try this. But if you do, we hope you'll think twice before posting the resulting photos on Facebook.)
According to this article from the New York Times, schools everywhere are struggling to adapt their dress codes to accommodate increasing numbers of students who express their gender identity through fashion. Some of the examples the Times discusses are genuinely complicated. Some are...not.
Like, for instance, the school in Mississippi that banned a high-achieving honor student from appearing in the yearbook because she wore a tux, rather than a shoulder-exposing drape, for her senior portrait. The school later released a statement defending the decision, saying that it was “based upon sound educational policy.”
In response, your editors at SparkNotes are releasing a statement saying: “Really?”
Because the last time we checked, yearbooks were more of a social construct than an educational one. Heck, in most places, they're not even handed out until the last week of school specifically because they're a distraction. So leaving aside the fact that a woman in a tuxedo is nothing new (A-list celebrity and noted beautiful person Angelina Jolie has even appeared on the red carpet in a tux), we're pretty sure that the presence of one in a yearbook isn't going to cause an epidemic of failing grades throughout the high school.
What do you think—should a girl be able to wear a tux in her yearbook photo? Or would the sight of a bow tie encircling a female neck cause total high school anarchy?
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