Annotated Bibliography

Alexandra Brodsky • @azbrodsky • 2 years ago, et al. Feministing,

eministing.com/2018/04/24/the-time-has-come-for-schools-to-accept-girls-bodies/.

Alexandra Brodsky’s blog post, It’s Time for Schools to Accept Girls’ Bodies, on

Feministing brings up great points about the dress code issue. She speaks on her experiences and

connections to the dress code as a black female high school student. The post talks specifically

about public schools in D.C., and while she does this, she lists off some of the strict rules that the

schools enforce. Brodsky thinks it is ideal to get rid of the dress code entirely because then there

would be no reason to take anybody out of their educational environment and no reason to

discriminate through body regulation. She rules out uniforms because they usually end up being

very costly. She also mentions that if schools insist on keeping a dress code, there are still minor

changes that can be made that help tremendously. The National Women’s Law Center teamed up

with twenty black girls from D.C. public schools to author a report on the dress codes in D.C.

schools and their bias against black girls.

Fink, Kathryn. “Why It Matters That New York City Will Ban Discrimination Based On Hair.”

1A, WAMU 88.5 - American University Radio, 21 Jan. 2020, the1a.org/segments/2019-

02-20-why-it-matters-that-new-york-city-will-ban-discrimination-based-on-hair/.

This 1A segment is based on New York City banning hair discrimination. Hair styles can

violate school dress codes, and black students are getting detention and being suspended. A

school wrestler was forced to cut his hair right before his match. The discussion is mostly
revolved around black discrimination because hair discrimination is targeted towards black

people. The segment highlights the various positions and input on this issue. They talk a lot

about how important hair is the black culture and what it means for their identity and self-

expression. When there are hair policies in dress codes, it sends a message to the targeted

African Americans that they are inherently unprofessional and unsophisticated. People being

ignorant of their culture is one of the main causes of this discrimination. They say that

representation can get rid of this stereotyping and generalization.

Grimsland, Matthew. Zoom Interview. 21 April. 2021.

Matthew Grimsland, a high school history teacher in Prince William County provided a

different perspective, one of a male teacher in a more progressive and wealthy area. He says that

he has never dress coded a student or even felt the need to. The dress code for Grimsland has

always been quite vague, and he says there is a lot of grey and blurry areas. He mentions that the

county gives male teachers a rule on dress coding, and it is that if they feel uncomfortable dress

coding a girl to her face, they must get a female teacher to dress code her. He says that he has

never felt the need to do this, and he also feels that a male teacher dress coding any young

women is very uncomfortable. He believes that the most effective way to bring awareness to

something is to educate others; he does this in his classroom by choosing to teach somethings

related to the units that he teaches but are outside of the curriculum. Because of the more

progressive nature of that area, he doesn’t notice any kinds of projected racism onto the students

through the dress code, but he still notices the gender inequity that the dress code creates. He

says that when it comes to dress coding young women for their clothes, not much has changed;

they are still being called out in the hallways, taken out of classrooms, and being forced to wear
clothes from the nurse's office. Grimsland mentions that the school doesn’t provide much of a

reason for the dress code other than making sure everyone is “being appropriate”. Differently, he

doesn’t think that the best solution is social media; he believes that it won’t attract the attention

of anyone that doesn’t already agree with me. He likes the letter writing solution, and thinks

event planning could also work.

Morris, Edward W. “‘Tuck in That Shirt!’ Race, Class, Gender, and Discipline in an Urban

School.” Sociological Perspectives, vol. 48, no. 1, 2005, pp. 25–48. JSTOR,

www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/sop.2005.48.1.25. Accessed 8 Mar. 2021.

In this journal article, Edward Morris explains his research on the relationship between

class, race, gender, and regulation/discipline in schools. His data comes from an urban middle

school in Texas. The school required students to wear uniforms to decrease “gang activity” and

to “make student poverty less visible.” Regulation of the dress code was always a source of

conflict between the teachers and students. He saw that the styles of young African American

girls were considered overly sexual even by the African American women that worked at the

school. Black and Hispanic boys were also expected by school staff to disobey the dress code.

One student, Daniel, even took it upon himself to write a persuasive paper against the dress code.

The author suggests that to fix this problem, schools should not try to reform the students

(especially those of marginalized groups), their styles, or their appearances. Instead, the schools

should find the value in those aspects, and then there should be more advancement towards

equality.
Muzzillo, Sarah. “The Finger Tip Test and Sexism in Schools.” Adios Barbie, 25 Sept. 2017,

www.adiosbarbie.com/2017/09/16277/

Sarah Muzzillo, a guest author on Adios Barbie, recounts her experience at a mandatory

assembly in middle school. The assembly was about the dress code and the rules dictating what

one can and cannot wear. She talks specifically about one rule called the “fingertip test”; this

meant that all skirts, dresses, and shorts had to be at the tip of your fingers when dropping them

by your sides, and this was a rule specifically for girls. She talks about what messages that sent

her 12-year-old self. She said that the dress code led her to have some internalized misogyny and

competitive feelings towards other girls. It teaches young girls that they must accommodate male

comfort, and it teaches young boys that girls are sexual objects. Muzzillo mentions that dress

codes have a significant role in normalizing and continuing rape culture. She says that social

media has caused dress codes to slowly change; a sixth grader created a hashtag in Portland

against the dress code as well as many others. A high school in Illinois changed their dress code

to a new “respectful and inclusive” policy, and Sarah Muzzillo hopes more schools follow their

lead. Her last sentence is, “It’s time to let girls wear what they want.”

Pavlakis, Alyssa, and Rachel Roegman. “How Dress Codes Criminalize Males and Sexualize

Females of Color.” The Phi Delta Kappan, vol. 100, no. 2, 2018, pp. 54–58. JSTOR,

www.jstor.org/stable/26552445. Accessed 8 Mar. 2021.

This academic piece by Alyssa Pavlakis and Rachel Roegman is about how to dress code

in schools affects both male and female students of color. They surveyed students and

interviewed teachers at Lincoln High School (a pseudonym) to gather data on the topic; it
showed that black female students, black male students, and multiracial students are most likely

to be “coded” and/or disciplined for going against the dress code. In efforts to speak out against

the dress code, a group of students in New Jersey created the hashtag, “#Iamnotadistraction.”

This piece also mentions Samantha Parsons who created a dress code advocacy guide, and it is

based on her own experiences advocating in her own community for a gender-neutral policy,

meaning that the dress code should have less female oriented language. Several school districts

across the country like San José Unified School District and Portland Public Schools have

already started eliminating gender-specific language in the dress code. Those districts have also

been dabbling with some of the rules and changing them.

Pope, Bettina. Zoom Interview. 31 March. 2021.

Bettina Pope, a high school English and African American Literature teacher, shares her

insight about the dress code. Pope says that she has rarely ever dress coded anyone, but when she

has, it has been a male wearing something with “offensive language” written on it. She explains

that in her experiences, she noticed that the dress code is discriminatory towards different body

types and shapes; taller girls and curvier are coded more often. A great point that she brings up is

that the clothes that they sell for women in stores, specifically in the spring when it gets warm,

are already not within the dress code’s standards; these young girls are showing up to school in

the only kinds of clothes that are marketed to them and they are dress coded for it. Pope

mentions that she has seen school staff wait outside in the car line in the morning to dress code

kids getting out of the cars. She believes in still having an established dress code to make sure

kids aren’t showing up with offensive language on their clothes or whatever it may be, but she

thinks it should be more lenient and not so gendered. When it comes to the issues most important
to her, she is very vocal; she will do a lot of her activism by wearing shirts that say a certain

message on it, she will take pictures of herself in those shirts and post it on her social media, and

she will also make other posts on her social media about the issues to bring awareness. When

asked what I should do about my dress code issue, she says that an activist must play to their

own strengths whether that is marketing, social media, networking, event planning, etc., and they

should run with it.

Reddy-Best, Kelly L., and Eunji Choi. “‘Male Hair Cannot Extend Below Plane of the

Shoulder’and ‘No Cross Dressing’: Critical Queer Analysis of High School Dress Codes

in the United States.” Journa.l of Homosexuality, vol. 67, no. 9, Routledge, 2020, pp.1290-

340, doi:10.1080/00918369.2019.1585730

“Male Hair Cannot Extend Below Plane of the Shoulder” and “No Cross Dressing”:

Critical Queer Analysis of High School Dress Codes in the United States by Kelly L. Reddy-Best

and Eunji Choi brings a new and detailed perspective to this research, an LGBTQ perspective. It

shows how dress codes affect those who are LGBTQ. Note that creating policies without

collaborating with the people you're trying to protect can lead to biased and limiting

representations of those people. They talk about how growing up and realizing you might be a

part of the LGBTQ community can be a confusing time for self-expression, and that includes the

way one dresses. The dress code being very gendered is what makes it so hard on LGBTQ

people. They analyzed public high school’s dress codes for the 2016-2017 school year by using

the content analysis method. The goal was to see what would be best for creating inclusive

guidelines that schools can utilize in the future. Three different themes came in their results:

support of fluid gender expression, but not overtly; passive marginalization of gender non-
conforming or transgender identities or expressions; and active marginalization. These authors

conclude that there is a need for improvement in the language and imagery in these dress codes

so that there is room for all diverse kinds of identities and expressions.

Thomas, Caitlin. "Stillwater Parents Concerned about Public School Dress Code." University

Wire, Feb 04, 2019. ProQuest, https://librarylink.uncc.edu/login?url=https://www-proquest-

com.librarylink.uncc.edu/wire-feeds/stillwater-parents-concerned-about-public-

school/docview/2175571249/se-2?accountid=14605.

The newspaper article, Stillwater Parents Concerned About Public School Dress Code, is

about a group of parents that wrote and signed a letter to give to the school board at their

November Board of Education meeting. The parents wanted to express their concerns about the

dress code, and they asked the school board to either get rid of the dress code or replace it with a

“common sense measure”. They believe that the dress code preserves rape culture; young girls

are being taught that they are a distraction and are responsible for boys’ actions, and boys are

being taught that they are unable to control themselves and girls are responsible for their actions.

A few of the people that signed the letter shared why they signed and their specific problem with

the dress code. They also say that the dress code interferes with many girls’ confidence in their

bodies, but also in their learning environment. Overall, the letter successfully got the attention of

the Board of Education, and the Superintendent agreed to have another meeting again.
“When School Dress Codes Ban Students’ Bodies.” 1A, WAMU 88.5 - American University

Radio, 21 Jan.2020, the1a.org/segments/2018-05-08-when-school-dress-codes-ban-

students-bodies/.

This 1A segment addresses dress codes in schools. They discuss incidents that happened

in Florida, Michigan, and Kentucky; they raise questions of who the dress code affects and how

it affects them. They talk about how black girls are targeted in schools. There is input about the

messages a dress code sends, and there is discussion about what teachers think about the dress

code. It creates a victim blaming environment and maintains rape culture. Some say that

uniforms would not be a satisfactory solution because it interferes with self-expression. To fix

this problem, many of the guest speakers believe that dress codes need to be revised with the

voices of students in the discussion.

Zhou, Li. “Why School Dress Codes Are Sexist.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 21

Oct. 2015, www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/10/school-dress-codes-are-

problematic/410962/.

The author of this article in The Atlantic, Li Zhou, starts by talking about a student in Kentucky,

Maggie Sunseri who noticed the dress code disproportionately affecting girls at her middle

school. In the summer of 2015, Sunseri interviewed many of her classmates and her school

principle to talk about the negative impacts on young women; she, then, compiled these

interviews into a film called Shame: A Documentary on School Dress Code. Zhou

mentions that there has been a rise in social media and student activism that talk about

school attire rules, and this has led to many petitions and school walkouts. A great part of
this article is that it talks about gender non-conforming and transgender students; the

school dress codes can be harmful to self-expression, and those that struggle with their

gender identity or lack thereof rely on things like clothing to express how they feel on the

inside. Transgender students have been sent home for wearing clothing that does not match

their legal sex, and some have even been taken out of the yearbook. Over half of the

schools in the U.S. have a dress code that frequently outline gender-specific policies.