Dress Codes

Fare thee well, common sense

This winter has pretty much been a bust. It's been more spring-like than winter, for sure.  This is especially true in the Midwest. Our winter has been the mildest in forever.  Can I point out how ironic that is?  Every winter since we moved there was worse than the last until the winter we choose to move. Nice.

Since it's been really warm, people's thoughts have turned to spring and they have decided to dress accordingly.  This has led to a precipitous decline in dress at the Boy's high school.  Here are some of the snippets of the email that we got from the esteemed principal: "Spring has arrived early. And today, many girls came to school dressed inappropriately: too short shorts and too skimpy tops.  We need your help. If they leave the house, get out of the car, or get off the bus dressed appropriately for school that will help us maintain a modest environment. Please help us make a strong effort to enforce our dress code."

A couple of things - that the principal of a large suburban high school must write to parents appealing that they don't let their girls go to school dressed like they are working the pole is just sad.  What saddens me is that I fear that this appeal will fall on deaf ears.  Why? Our recent experience at the Spring Formal.  The Boy and his date went with a big group of other couples and before the dance, all the parents gathered to take pictures of the group.  Upon seeing the group, my appall-o-meter went to 11 on a scale of 1 to 10.  Several of the girls had purchased their dresses at a big blowout sale at Whores R Us.  Two of the dresses, and I use that term as loosely as possible, were apparently painted on. If either of them bent over, you'd see the moon, and not the one Neil Armstrong walked on.  And here's the thing...most of the mothers were oohing and aahing over the dresses and most of the dads nodded approvingly.

Look, I'm not much for prudishness and I'm certainly not Amish, but it's time to take a stand - we've got to step it up.  It's time for parents to stop letting their daughters leave the house looking like they are working the next shift at Club Spanky or their boys looking like they just got out of a Turkish prison.  As fathers, we have to step it up, especially for our daughters.  Fathers were once teen-age boys.  We know how the mind of the teen-age boy works.  That experience should be enough to pretty much never let your daughters leave the house. Even if I hadn't grown up in the Church with its focus on modesty, as a dad, common sense would dictate that my girls would need to cover up a bit before heading out into the world.  I'm not saying burkas, but I'll say this: Modest is hottest.

I'll say it again - modest is hottest.