I am angry about dress codes

Oh jeez. Dress codes. There is so much wrapped up in there.¹

Often dress codes are justified for the comfort of others. This is often a disguised sexism, sexualization of femme bodies, or slut shaming. Or more.

There are many things that are messed up with dress codes.

There’s telling women/girls/femme folks, and other folks who are perceived as female, to dress a certain way so they don’t “distract” men/boys in school. This thereby prioritizes boys’ learning, shames girls/femmes, sexualizes girls/femme presenting bodies, and assumes boys/men cannot control themselves. There are so many examples of this. There’s addressing issues of sexual harassment and assault by policing what people wear, instead of teaching people about being respectful and consensual with others. There’s assuming that certain outfits will protect you from sexual assault while others will make you vulnerable.² There’s shaming people when they wear something considered “inappropriate” or “suggestive” by publicly asking them to leave the gym, or get a change of clothes, thereby using public humiliation as a tool to control what girls/women/femmes wear.

Dress codes often intersect with other forms of oppression. Black folks, for example, have been prohibited from wearing their natural hair and other hairstyles associated with black cultures (including box braids, cornrows, dreadlocks, hair extensions and weaves) in schools³. And Muslim women face oppression by dress codes too, there is a history of prohibiting athletes from competing while wearing the hijab. Dress codes are also used to police gender non-comformity, targeting trans and queer students who wear clothes that are “unsuitable” for their assumed/perceived/assigned gender. Dress codes are often sizeist ⁴. Dress codes are often classist, valuing certain styles that are more expensive and banning clothes that poor and working class people can afford, often using blatant language about trying to be a “classy” establishment, or equating dressing a certain way with competence and professionalism. ⁵ One study in the US found that in schools dress codes are disproportionately enforced against people with disabilities.

There is tons to say about white supremacy and dress codes, for example how dress codes were violently enforced in residential schools and long hair being cut to culturally separate, humiliate and gender young Indigenous kids. There is using “gang attire” as code for clothing worn by Black and Latino men ⁶. There is forbidding Muslim women from wearing the hijab even though that is a violation of human rights law. And there is the fact that dress code violations are enforced in ways that target POC youth in schools more than white youth, contributing to the schools-to-prison pipeline.

When we talk about “acceptability”, “professionalism”, and “discomfort”, we are talking about white able-bodied cis-masculine centrered standards. We are referencing a history of colonialism, racism, and patriarchy. We are upholding the notion that a gender binary is real and should be enforced. Dress codes, in short, have too often been a tool of a dominant culture and a way to police certain kinds of bodies. And as dress codes relate to rape culture, they sometimes project the idea that when femme folks dress a certain way their bodies become inherently sexualized, and as such are inherently at risk of an assault. This mentality blames the person experiencing harm, instead of focusing on the person who caused the harm.

The good news is that some administrators are starting to recognize the damaging impact that bad dress codes can have on people. The Greater Victoria School board is in the process of reviewing its dress code language to remove anything that targets girls.

And then there’s the other news. The Martlet published an article detailing the experiences of a woman who was approached by a CARSA staff member and asked to change because her shorts were “too short”.

“I walk away, try to calm myself because I was so embarrassed. And then I look back — everyone was still staring at me,” Luiza says, speaking through tears. “I felt like they were looking at me like I was the biggest slut. It felt so humiliating.” – Martlet, August 4, 2017

All of this has been justified by CARSA’s new dress code (PDF), which “maintain a healthy, safe environment in the weight room” by enforcing that “All patrons must wear attire that covers their abdomen, chest and gluteal fold. No open-toed shoes, sandals or dress shoes. Shirts cannot be mesh or see-through.”

And yet while the staff aim to foster a “safe environment”, they are publicly humiliating gym members.⁷

And this is not a solitary incident. Another Martlet article describes the experiences of one woman who was banned from the gym after responding to a man ogling her by telling him to “fuck off” and giving him the finger.

“… I was told to phone security whenever sexual harassment occurs. Peterson admitted that the student staff at CARSA aren’t properly trained to deal with these issues. Eddy kept interrupting me while I was trying to express myself — I felt like she was trying to bully me. Peterson told me that I shouldn’t give sexual harassers the finger, because, “think about how you would feel.” I replied that I don’t sexually harass people. To think that the Associate Director of CARSA sympathizes with sexual harassers is actually quite disturbing.” Sierra, August 10, 2017

It is distressing to hear that the person who experienced violence was punished for standing up for herself – particularly when it was admitted that staff have no training to deal with such situations. If staff are not properly equipped to respond to or prevent sexual harassment, and those who experience harassment are suspended for resisting such violence, who is CARSA protecting? I would assume when CARSA says “safe” they mean fostering an environment where folks feel safe enough to work out without experiencing violence, i.e. NOT safe enough to sexually harass other gym members.

I am curious about the “healthy environment” which publicly humiliates gym members and fails to prioritize those who experience harm.

What this calls for is more training.

CARSA needs to take an active role in training their staff to respond to sexualized violence and at the very least train their staff to enforce the dress code in caring/not-shaming ways (if it’s going to exist). It is unsettling, and yet unsurprising, that those who experience violence at CARSA are having to demand that staff are trained. We know that gyms are dominated by masculine folks, and we know that men are the widespread perpetrators of sexualized violence.⁸

With this in mind, it makes a lot of sense to train staff to deal with sexual harassment and other types of sexualized violence. If you’re going to recognize that something isn’t tolerable, you need to have trained staff to respond. Right now folks are just told to call campus security.

When it comes to dress codes and sexualized violence, the issue isn’t clothing. The issue is one of entitlement over women and femme bodies. The issue is a lack of knowledge about consent and respecting boundaries.

And as we’ve quickly touched on, it goes beyond sexualized violence. Dress codes are/have been so entangled up in systems of oppression and violence, that designing and enforcing them seriously risk reinforcing racism, sexism, classism, and other forms of oppression. The CARSA dress codes have been justified to maintain the “comfort” of individuals using the gym. With all this context in mind, there are many questions that need to be considered. Whose comfort is being prioritized? Which identities, genders, and cultures and determining what is considered appropriate? In what ways does someone’s race, class, and gender impact their experience of the dress codes? Whose cultural attire are being normalized? And whose are being discriminated against? Who does this dress code protect and who does it harm? In what ways is the dress code contributing to a culture of entitlement and mysogyny?

Writing this article has brought up so many questions for us. I imagine that we will be writing more on this soon.

We invite CARSA administrators and staff to attend some workshops this fall. We would love that.