Life is a dress code: Thoughts on Wasatch High School

The internet has recently discovered modesty photo edits in a Utah high school year book. While I am shocked that this happened, I am disgusted at some of the comments made on the internet. Somewhere dress codes became evil and problematic. Maybe I'm just traditional, but I think dress codes in schools teach students an important lesson.

The world is full of unspoken dress codes. If you're looking to impress in a job interview you dress a step higher than what is worn at the office. You don't wear jeans on a hike in the middle of summer. You wear light-weight clothes to the beach. You wear something between nice jeans and shirt to traditional "Sunday best" to church. You wear dark colors to a funeral. You don't wear white at a wedding (unless you're the bride, of course). Any situation you find yourself in comes with a dress code.

I may have overdressed him for bed
in his baby tux, but dang was he cute.

Something a lot of young people struggle with is knowing what is appropriate to wear when. If anyone can make it through adolescence without being over or under dressed at some point they deserve a gold star. Now young people are hearing from those barely older than them that it doesn't matter what you wear. Yet so many of these slightly older young people are without jobs, or at least jobs that you can actually live off of.

Now, I'm not saying that if they dressed better they'd get better jobs just like that. There's obviously way more factors to it, but I am willing to bet that the job search would be a little easier for quite a few of them if they would just dress a little smarter.

Smarter? Dress smarter? How do you do that? You don't wear something super trendy to an interview with a non-trendy employer. You pay attention to what is worn at that office when you do your research and dress one step up. When in doubt, traditional business dress will rarely go wrong.

Here's an example of why you need to dress the part sometimes. My husband works as an un-benefitted employee at a hospital. He works on a different unit every day. He happens to be particularly liked by the patients and staff on the children's unit, where he wants to work all the time. When a position opened up, he wore nice slacks and a button-down shirt to the interview. At the rest of this hospital, this attire is perfectly acceptable. Well, even though my husband seemed to be a shoe-in for the job, he didn't get it. Another position on the unit opened up recently and he noticed some of the benefitted employees who wanted the shift putting on suits (not normal in the rest of the hospital). Now, when he interviews for the position, he knows he needs to dress up even more if he wants the job.

Teenagers need to learn that there are dress standards that they will have to meet for the rest of their lives. Unfortunately, many don't get this instruction from parents. I think it's just one of those things that many parents don't think about. Many teenagers do get this instruction from their parents, but ignore it. Dress codes at schools help teach students that there is, in fact, dress standards in this world and if you don't follow them there can be consequences.

Before anyone thinks I'm defending the actions of Wasatch High School, let me clarify. It is never ok to enforce a dress code through unauthorized photo edits. A dress code is only effective as long as it is enforced when the clothes are being worn and on everyone. Also, dress codes should apply to both guys and girls. I don't know if there is a section of the Wasatch dress code for guys, but if there isn't, there should be. I do not think telling a girl to cover her bra straps or cleavage or butt cheeks (let's be honest, short shorts at school just have to be uncomfortable anyway) is telling her that she needs to control men's thoughts. I think it is telling her that you need to dress a certain way in a certain place. Same thing for guys with saggy pants and muscle tees.