Remember back when (I used to blog, and :-) Evan had a stall at the kids' marketplace as a part of his entrepreneurship class? It's Vivian's turn now. She and her friend created a business selling custom poems. You give them a word or phrase and in about five minutes, the girls write and illustrate a poem for you. They've hit the trifecta: their product is ultra-customized, the value of their product is not defined by the cost of parts, and they have no competition. The downside is a limited market: there are only so many literary risk-takers who want poems written by a couple of dyslexic middle school girls.
So one day I overheard Vivian and her friend discussing how they should get these cute small wax-paper packets to package their poems. The next evening I see these purple-blue-green things on the dining table at home.
Me: "Oh - is this what you're going to put your poems in?"
Vivian: "No Dad. Those are my pads."
Having a daughter is distinctly different and new. Broadly speaking I understand what Evan goes through in so far as his body and biology is concerned. Not so with the girl child. But we try not to not talk about the differences. I leave the exam room when the doctor and nurse are in there with Vivian. But we talk about it afterwards. If Jo got really busy with a dream job, I feel I could step in and help buy Vivian her tampons, shaving stuff, or clothes. It wouldn't be easy but I wouldn't be helpless.
Fortunately, Vivian buys some of her own clothes (with money she has earned - sometimes, by selling poems). She doesn't always make the best decisions and at times, Jo has returned clothes to the store the next day and helped her pick something instead that more is suitable for school. Vivian's school has a dress code. The line between what is acceptable and what isn't is a bit blurry. No enforcement of the code for most of this school year has made the line even blurrier.
Vivian's shorts were getting - well - short. So last week Jo and Vivian went out shopping and bought a few shorts that were longer. In fact, they were a good bit longer than what Vivian had been wearing to school all year.
The first day Vivian wore these new denim shorts to school - with a white t-shirt and solid black thigh high socks, she got dress coded. Her shorts didn't go down to her fingertips as per code. In fact they were considerably short of that lofty goal. You'd need to get "uniform" shorts, cargo shorts, boys shorts, or custom tailored shorts to meet the dress code - you couldn't just waltz in to Old Navy and buy something off the shelf.
Vivian came back home unhappy.
We encourage Vivian to think through her sartorial decisions. What do you like, what are you comfortable with, where and what are you dressing for, what your peers wear, what you can afford, etc. The hope is for her to develop her own confident sense of fashion - initially with some parental input.
School dress codes are based on what keeps the boys calm (and later, men). And that is a slippery slope which ends in slut shaming, victim blaming, and a mandatory full body burka.
So over dinner yesterday, we helped Vivian sort through her options. Jo cautioned her against completely alienating her teachers over this issue of dress code. We even discussed the law - as a private school, the dress code was pretty much what the school decides it to be. Sure - she could try to change the code, but it would have to be done by persuasion and reasoning, not confrontation. Eventually she decided on a tongue-in-cheek response. This morning she wore her oversized Rosedale Ride sweatshirt over a short pair of shorts. The sweatshirt comes down to below her fingertips, but she looks like she's not wearing much else. Which segues to the last word in the title of this post.
I'm going to ask her to write a poem about "dress code"! Full circle.
No comments:
Post a Comment