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Uniforms and thong underwear and niqab, oh my!
The news sites and blogosphere lately have been abuzz with the topic of what constitutes appropriate attire for students.
In West Virginia, as elsewhere in the U.S., school officials are sick and tired of seeing students in "vulgar" clothing such as thong underwear, cleavage-featuring shirts, and baggy pants. This has been a problem with college students in my neck of the woods, although lately I've been seeing fewer thongs sticking out of young women's jeans and more butt crack. (I've always said you don't know your students until you've stared down their butt cleavage over your lunch in the student union.)
Such exposed skin and underwear has led many school districts to consider implementing polices requiring school uniforms. I barely missed this reform myself in Long Beach, California, where, when I was a few years into high school, the district mandated uniforms for K-8 students in order to cut down on gang-related violence. Since then, a few high schools in the district have also adopted uniforms, although students always find ways to subvert uniform codes and their more byzantine cousins, the lengthy public school dress codes that list forbidden items. When I was in high school, girls in gangs, or whose boyfriends were in gangs, would sometimes come to school wearing a forbidden Raider's football team jacket over a similarly verboten halter top. Classy, n'est-ce pas? And yet--creative and subversive in a way that I kind of admire because during my teen years I never had that kind of chutzpah.
I've always been conflicted about dress codes and especially about mandated uniforms for students. I think I might have appreciated a uniform policy in grades 4-6, when I enrolled in classes at a school in a neighboring attendance district, one whose students' families were better off than mine. Getting picked on for not having the latest clothes was demoralizing. (I was fortunate that my parents could buy me at least last season's fashions; some parents can't even afford uniforms for their students.) At the same time, I try to be a champion of personal, independent expression, especially when clothes are used in an attempt to subvert administrative decree. (Sometimes students get a bit, um, flagrant in rebelling: in South Wales earlier this month, students burned their blazers.)
As a third-wave feminist who values the diverse perspectives of women around the world, but also as someone who lacks any substantive religious background, I have conflicted feelings over the UK government's recent decision not to ban veils in schools, a possibility they had been considering because of the growing popularity among some British Muslim women of niqab, a veil that covers the face. A women's rights group in Quebec is also trying to ban hejab as well as yarmulkes, and the Turkey, Tunisia, and France have already banned the veil in public schools and/or elsewhere. The movement to ban veils is spreading. For example, a recent survey of Danes showed 46 percent favor a ban on headscarves in schools, and the Dutch also have mixed feelings about burqas. There has also been at least one case in Spain. Italy, too is struggling with issues surrounding the assimilation of Muslim women.
Zeynab of the fabulous blog Muslimah Media Watch gives a nice summary of the issue, explains one part of these bans that is particularly problematic, and wonders where mainstream U.S. feminist organizations would stand on the issue:
Filing “hejab bans” under religious discrimination isn’t fully incorrect, but neither is it fully correct. Making the hejab bans a religious issue implies that hejab is mandatory and part of Islamic belief. While many Muslim women see it as a mandatory obligation, many Muslim women do not: Islamic scholars still debate verses in the Holy Qur’an and ahadith that pertain to the idea of a woman covering herself. There are many devout Muslim women who don’t observe hejab for whatever reason, and decrying hejab bans on the pretext of religious freedom leaves these women (who are potential allies) out.
The issue of banning hejabs (or any other religious garb or symbols worn on the body) is really an issue of personal freedom, but banning the hejab specifically targets women. The reality of a hejab ban is that a government would (or does, in Turkey’s & France’s cases) not allow women to
