Thursday, February 26, 2015

Rugged Individualists


“Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it.”Tallulah Bankhead


          The other day I was at the mall when the sight of a teenager shuffling around in flannel pajama bottoms reminded me of my days of teaching and the constant struggle over the kids’ sartorial choices. My urban school system finally decreed uniforms for everyone, but the students still managed to put their personal stamp on whatever they wore.

In the last few years  I was teaching, the pre-invention-of-the-belt look became popular with the boys. The idea was to lower the waistband of your pants until they hung at the absolute bottom of your derriere, thereby providing your audience with a colorful view of your underwear every time your shirt rode up, which was most of the time. The classier boys wore two pairs of underwear – one for the purpose intended, the other for viewing. 
While I grew really tired of my students appearing as though they were perpetually on the verge of sitting down, the droopy drawers did serve the purpose of slowing down anyone running from authority, since it’s particularly hard to get any speed up if the crotch of your khakis is riding at your knees. Carrying anything at the same time was problematic, too, since one hand was needed to keep the pants from tripping you entirely.
I sometimes wondered, though, if some of my male students found blessed relief in the new required uniforms. Many of my female students were spectacularly endowed and were enthusiastic devotees of the cleavage-as-accessory line of fashion. Now everyone was forced into polo shirts, which, no matter how form-fitting, still had only that three-button opportunity for exposure, and might allow the boy sitting next to them a least a glimmer of focus on classwork. Unfortunately, this mandated above-the-waist modesty was often cancelled by the girls’ trousers, which looked as though they’d been applied by a compressor.
It was a constant tug of war between enforcing school rules to the letter and looking the other way so I could actually get in a little teaching. There was a considerable amount of giving an inch and taking a mile going on.
Could they wear a shirt under the polo? Could they wear a sweater over the polo? How many pockets were allowed on the khaki’s? If they had stitching similar to jeans, did that move them to the true, and therefore forbidden, jeans category? It was almost easier in the good old days when everyone would show up in their gang colors.
Other kids expressed themselves with blue hair, tattoos, or piercings. A student would appear in my room looking like a member of the Young Republicans between her neck and her ankles, but would have on high-heeled shoes, purple anklets, and a piercing in her tongue that made her a candidate for speech therapy.
Over the years of teaching, I must have grown really oblivious to the eccentricities of my students’ wardrobe choices. On one especially frigid late winter day my honors English class erupted into applause upon the arrival of one boy to my room. At that moment I realized this was the first time we weren’t looking at his knees. He had worn shorts every day of the school year, no big deal until you remember that this was Western Massachusetts, not exactly a tropical paradise.



16 comments:

  1. All they want is a reaction....if you just hold in that remark you are dying to make, eventually, they seem to conform.

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  2. I think high school has more challenges with clothing than middle school kids. I also retired before the dangling pants came in. With clothing there are so many buttons you can push...parents, teachers, peers, yourself.

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    1. I guess things never change, Red. An image of Marlon Brando in the Wild Ones comes to mind.

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  3. At the high school the girl's dress code is no breasts exposed and fingertips cannot extend below whatever is the lower garment. However, waiting to pick up a grandchild or the other after school, I wondered how those girls kept their finger tips above the Daisy Dukes. I asked my grandson, once, if they were not distracting in class. Long pause, and he responded "The honors class girls don't seem to dress like that." Sly dog.

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    1. Sly dog indeed. That boy has a future in the diplomatic corps.

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  4. Here in Australia, when I was in school, uniform was optional at Primary School level, but compulsory at High School level and the rules were quite strictly enforced. a lot of the girls raised the hems on their summer uniform dresses in the years following Twiggy's appearance as a model, remember her? Stick arms and legs HUGE eyes? but there was a limit imposed, so many inches above the knee was acceptable, any higher and you were told to lower the hem by the next day. Kids expressed their individuality via hairdo and school bag decoration.

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    1. I remember in the 60s leaving the house with my skirt one length and then rolling it up at the waist once I got to school. We probably gained an extra four inches visually around our middles.

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  5. Ha! I have smiled at that fashion statement of the hanging pants many times and wondered where in the world it came from. :-)

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    1. Sadly, the explanation I've usually heard is that it's modeled after the look created when convicts' belts are taken from them in prison.
      Not exactly the ideal role model.

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  6. I spent a year of high school in Australia and had to wear a uniform. I loved it. Didn't have to worry about what to wear.

    The fingertip rule exists here, but apparently nobody enforces it. Some of the girls look like...you know.

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  7. Fun post.
    Teen rebellious dress codes go way back. I am 75 and I remember in my senior year while most of the guys wore the preppy look of buttoned down collars and chinos, some wore jeans hanging low on the hips. It was sport for the button down guys to sneak up behind a fellow with low hanging jeans . They would grab the pockets and pull the fellows pants down to his knees. It was call "pantsing." Now days a good sneeze will accomplish the same thing.

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  8. My stepson is a deputy sheriff. He says that many times while detaining a person for questioning, he is given advance warning that at suspect is getting ready to "run" when he reaches down to grab the crotch of this pants to hold them up while he runs. It gives the officer a heads up to deal with the coming situation. It is a big joke among the officers.

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  9. That's a handy early-warning system.

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  10. I like that drawing! Some of the guys I see walking on main street might as well be pulling their pants in a wagon!

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  11. Oh, this made me laugh! I had the exact same experience teaching high school. The kids thought they would die when we went to uniforms, and first hour class was each teacher's responsibility to enforce. Just one more reason I'm glad I'm retired!

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  12. At what point did boys/men think the rest of us wanted to see their underwear? I certainly don't and can't wait for that fad to move on!

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