School-clothing policies often discriminatory
‘Dress Coded’ shows girls get targeted more than boys
HARTFORD, Conn. — Carrie Firestone has two daughters, ages 16 and 14. Like most moms, she got in the habit of tuning out their conversations, to focus on her own thoughts. Then one day she heard a bit of conversation that drew her in.
“She was sharing her friend’s story. She was saying, ‘Why is that guy always looking at her chest? Why is he always complaining about what they were wearing?’” Firestone said. “I remembered conversations I heard in the minivan and thought, I should have been listening more.”
Out of that conversation, followed by extensive research, Firestone has written the new middle-grade novel “Dress Coded.”
“Dress Coded” is about a subject teen girls know by heart: School dress codes are harshly enforced against girls and rarely if ever against boys.
Girls’ self-esteem and school performance are affected and family budgets strained. The practice promotes body shaming, slut shaming, period shaming and even racism, Firestone said and plants the seeds of rape culture, in which girls are blamed for boys’ reactions to their clothes.
The book tells the story of Molly Frost, whose friend starts her period in a pair of white pants. The girl ties her sweatshirt around her waist to hide the stain, exposing her tank top. Their middle school’s dress-code enforcer, a man, embarrasses the girl by telling her the tank top is inappropriate and orders her to put her sweatshirt back on. The girl refuses and is punished. Molly sets out to defend her friend and expose other instances of humiliating dress-coding in her school.
To research her book, Firestone said she asked friends on Facebook to share stories of unfair dress-coding. She got an earful, which led to many other stories.
“The more I interviewed teens, the more horrified I was,” Firestone said. “Up until then, I was always complaining about what my girls were wearing. The parent default mode is, ‘You really need to be more thoughtful about what you wear.’ Since then I had a complete transformation about that comment. I really had to think about why we’re all sort of conditioned to say these things.”
Firestone wants her book to start a conversation and be a blueprint for activism.
In an interview, Firestone discusses dress coding and how it is rooted in misogyny, lookism and racism.
Q: Girls are targeted more than boys, but are certain kind of girls targeted more than others?
A: Yes. People who selfidentify as female are targeted. Black girls were disproportionately targeted. It’s not just their clothes, it’s their hair. The Crown Act is a law that some states are trying to pass that prohibits hair discrimination. One of the characters in the book is targeted because of the size of her hair. That’s actually a big problem.
Q: How does a family’s income affect dress coding?
A: Girls who are 12 or 13 may have grown three inches in one month and their parents don’t always have the budget to head to the mall to buy them a whole new wardrobe. There’s a definite element of social class to it.
Q: How are dress coding and body shaming related issues?
A: Some girls develop at an earlier age. Middle school is where this is the biggest problem. One of the girls I spoke to said a girl who hadn’t developed in seventh grade wore an outfit to school. Her friend who was developed wore the same outfit. Her friend was dress coded, and she was not. Also, girls with long legs who can’t find shorts that fall below the fingertips. Girls who are more developed are more sexualized by school staff. It seems strange that an adult needs to police 12and 13-year-old girls just at that moment of physical growth and development. That’s really disturbing to me.
Q: How does dress coding hurt girls’ selfesteem?
A: Girls are already self-conscious at that age. They feel the need when they to go to school to hide or cover themselves, because they’re freaked out by people policing their bodies. It’s very hard for girls to just be themselves. That’s why there’s the hashtag, #DressInPeace. Also the humiliation erodes girls’ feeling of self-worth and makes them feel self-conscious all the time. Nobody in middle school wants to be called out in front of their peers.
Q: Would boys want to read this book, too?
A: Yes. I really hope parents of boys read this book with their boys. I shared the advance copy with a friend’s son. She told me it changed the way he thought about things. He stepped out to defend a 12-year-old classmate who was reprimanded because her bra strap was showing.
Q: How does dress coding contribute to rape culture?
A: The message dress coding gives to girls is, you are responsible for the way boys think and behave. It gives the message to boys, you’re not responsible for your own thoughts and actions and behaviors. It sets up a toxic and scary culture of ‘what was she wearing’ in rape situations. You can connect the dots.