Word: dress
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...think dress guidelines are stupid," Lisa Bequette was saying just the other day, before beginning 8th grade at Maryland's Mount Airy Middle School, northwest of Washington. "I would wear a cropped T shirt to school. Why should they tell me not to show my belly button?" Good thing she is a little too young to meet Brendan McReady at a mixer. McReady, a junior at Bethesda- Chevy Chase High School, has some sentimental regard for the school uniforms at an alma mater: "Everyone wore the same thing every day, so perhaps it was easier. You'd get up, throw...
...thing is clear as kids all over the country have begun to troop back to class this fall: whether instilled by peer pressure or insisted upon by academic administrators, dress codes are in every school. Bicycle shorts, those shiny, shape-hugging racer bottoms made of Lycra, are strongly discouraged in New York public and private schools, tolerated at South High School in Minneapolis, where they are currently very popular, but dismissed as flashy by students at Country Day School in Charlotte, N.C. Traditionalists, who would not wear such shorts even on an Exercycle, claim that standard uniforms (blazers for boys...
...that uniforms can sometimes accomplish is being sought by some inner city schools as well. At Helene W. Grant elementary school in New Haven, Conn., uniforms are just being inaugurated for this school year. Detroit's Mumford High School is raising a ruckus by handing down a get-tough dress code aimed at eliminating flash. The code's language is starchy enough for a military academy ("Misdirected students preen about, modeling flashy, expensive clothing and exerting little energy in their academic pursuits"); on the proscribed list are leather coats, jogging outfits, shorts, designer glasses, designer jeans and "custom-made briefcases...
Regulations like these also douse the simple joy of dressing, not for success or status, but just as self-expression. Abraham Mora, a junior at Chicago's Francis W. Parker School, has packed away his tie-dye Ts ("so trendy now") in favor of Girbaud jeans and Cole-Haan loafers. "Just look at me," says Michael Barnett, a junior at Washington's Field School who sports a vigorously declarative print shirt. "I'm a wild and crazy guy. With dress codes you don't get to see other people's personalities, just the same old clothes." Brand-name sportswear, from...
...like a big fashion show," says Dana Irvin, a senior at the Springboro, Ohio, High School. "You have to dress nice to fit in, and I guess there's a lot of pressure to remember when you last wore an outfit. If you can, it's best to wait three weeks before you wear an outfit to school again." This creates double trouble for Gina and Jeanine Vermillion, twin sisters who are starting their freshman year at suburban St. Louis' Selvidge Junior High School. "Each one coordinates her own outfit because everything's got to match," reports their mother...