I bet you didn’t think there was a movement afoot. But it took a careful read of today’s papers to arrive at this trend spotting moment. We start with today’s Advocate where Alexandra Fenwick reports on Brien McMahon science instructor and Navy JROTC coordinator David Ellis’ one man crusade against fashion. You can chronicle hot fashion trends retroactively without reading a single fashion magazine simply by reading high school dress code policy handbooks.
And if you dig deeper, you will find all the same reasons trotted out for wanting to band the latest fashion forward garment, that brought us such gems as banning jeans and white t-shirts in the 50’s, long hair and mini skirts in the 60’s, earrings on guys in the 70’s, shorts and tube tops in the 80’s, piercings and tattoos in the 90’s, not to mention the inane fears about bell bottoms, spaghetti straps and platform shoes. All these garments, administrators cautioned would lead to “hoodlums”, disruption in the classroom, bad behavior and interfere with learning. From the Advocate:
Ellis suggested that the dress code specifically prohibit: swim trunks or pajama pants; tight-fitting tops for girls, including spaghetti-strap tank tops and visible bra straps; low-rise pants that allow a view of underwear; flip flops or bed slippers as footwear; skirts and shorts that are less than 6 inches from the knees; hats or do-rags; and heavy coats worn during school hours.
He also wants the policy to require belts for boys and to ban book bags in favor of students carrying their books.
Ellis also is calling for the elimination of T-shirts for boys and girls in favor of collared shirts that must be tucked into pants. But he has he backed away from a recommendation to ban denim.
“Frankly, I am opposed to jeans, but it is probably asking too much to require trousers,” he wrote in his letter to the Board of Education.
The key graf though, is this one:
Ellis went to high school in Indiana in the early 1960s, when miniskirts were getting girls sent home from school. He said his point of view may be considered old-fashioned by some, but he said the benefits of a stricter dress code outweigh the drawbacks.
Old-fashioned is hardly the word I’d use to describe his preoccupation with fashion. Amazingly, what you wear does not interfere with how you think or act, because if it did, smart educated people would all still be wearing togas. Figuring out what not to wear, is an impossible standard. Witness all the fashion mistakes that generate columns of ink. If it was so easy we wouldn’t have the fugglies.
But other mini’s are in the news too. That would be mini-golf at Vets Park. Today we learn that Vets Park may be a toxic wasteland (it has few trees) because it was once a marsh turned city dump. Come to think of it, it explains the inch deep mud that oozes during the Oyster festival. The anti-mini-golfers are shoring up the movement with discussions of deed restrictions and environmental issues. The pro-mini-golfers are saying that Central Park in NYC has all sorts of commercial enterprises.
Golfers, on the other hand, are rightfully miffed that Oak Hills still doesn’t have a driving range. And if the city were serious about generating revenue, it would be working on a driving range project, not a mini-golf project. If the people who want to have mini-golf near SoNo are really serious, they would conclude that from a market perspective they would want to be closer to the Maritime Aquarium, where families actually look for things to do together. Would a historic maritime themed, giant neon lobster windmills and dancing clams with Norwalk Hats, mini-golf attraction seem that far fetched?
source: Advocate, Stricter dress code sought for students, May 6 2007
source: Advocate, Field study: Opinions divided on effect of former dump on parks project, , May 6 2007
