Some Thoughts on Dress Codes

by David Balashinsky

 

 

It's reported that Spirit Airlines has revised its passengers' dress code.  Section 4.3 of Spirit's Contract of Carriage states that "A guest shall not be permitted to board the aircraft or may be required to leave an aircraft if that guest . . . is barefoot or inadequately clothed (i.e., see-through clothing; not adequately covered; exposed breasts, buttocks, or other private parts), or whose clothing or . . . body art is lewd, obscene or offensive in nature. . . ."  It's not clear to me whether this policy constitutes a clarification, a tightening or a loosening of its dress code but it comes in the wake of a widely publicized incident last fall in which two women were removed from a Spirit Airlines aircraft because they were wearing crop tops.  

Spirit Airlines isn't the only carrier that has created controversy by ejecting passengers because of what they were wearing.  Also last fall, a Delta Airlines flight attendant forced a Marine Corp veteran off of a flight because of a suicide-prevention message that was printed on the veteran's tee-shirt.  The message, which in the opinion of the flight attendant, was "threatening," was this:

Last spring, in another incident involving Delta, one if its employees escorted a passenger off of one of its flights because she wasn't wearing a bra, although, ultimately, the passenger was allowed to re-board on the condition that she layer a second shirt over the one she was wearing.  As NBC4 Los Angeles reported, the passenger had been told by the head flight attendant that "Delta's official policy is that 'women must cover up.'"

Delta Airlines does not, in fact, have an official policy that "women must cover up."  Delta's Contract of Carriage explicitly states (in Rule 7, Section E) that "Delta will not refuse to provide transportation based upon race, color, national origin, religion, sex or ancestry."  However, Delta's Contract of Carriage goes on to say that

Subject to those qualifications, Delta may refuse to transport any passenger, or may remove any passenger from its aircraft, when refusal to transport or removal of the passenger is reasonably necessary in Delta's sole discretion  [my emphasis] for the passenger's comfort or safety, for the comfort or safety of other passengers or Delta employees, or for the prevention of damage to the property of Delta or its passengers or employees.  By way of example, and without limitation, Delta may refuse to transport or may remove passengers from its aircraft in any of the following situations. . . .

The contract then lists eight "situations."  Situation number two is "When the passenger is barefoot" and situation number eight is "When the passenger's conduct, attire, hygiene or odor creates an unreasonable risk of offense or annoyance to other passengers."

The problem that immediately arises here is the ambiguity written into this and similar airline policies and, therefore, the subjectivity that these policies authorize in those who are delegated with the task of enforcing them.  As the Times explains in its coverage of this story,  "Clarifying all this tends to fall to airline employees, including the flight crew."  But airline employees, whether flight attendants or pilots, are people just like the rest of us, with their own cultural baggage, unconscious biases, prejudices, deeply ingrained concepts of gender, and standards of propriety.  Inevitably, offensiveness, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.  Who's to say whether someone is "adequately clothed" or "inadequately covered," as Spirit puts it?  If a woman were wearing a crop top, her breasts (assuming she has breasts) would be covered but her abdomen would not be.  Is this woman "inadequately clothed" or is she, rather, "adequately covered"?

I have mixed and contradictory feelings about dress codes.  I support them, in principle and up to a point, but I am also bothered by the fact that they can privilege one standard of dress by imposing it broadly on a society that consists of a diversity of standards.  Moreover, the standards that they impose may be sexist, racist or discriminatory in other equally invalid ways.  It should not be lost on anyone that two of the most notorious recent episodes of passengers having been removed from aircraft or otherwise chastened (I use that word advisedly) for their attire involved women passengers.  Just to be sure I wasn't jumping to conclusions or succumbing to the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy, I typed into my browser's search box the following questions: What is the most common reason women are removed from airplanes? and What is the most common reason men are removed from airplanes?  The AI-generated response surprised me but also confirmed my suspicions.  The most common reason (according to google AI) that women get kicked off airplanes is because they have engaged in "disruptive behavior caused by excessive alcohol consumption" but the second most common reason (I have to assume the reasons are listed in order of their rate of occurrence) is because they were "wearing attire that is considered too revealing or offensive according to airline policies."  In contrast, while the most common reason men get removed from airplanes is also because of "disruptive behavior," the AI-generated overview includes not one mention of men being kicked off of flights on account of being "inadequately clothed."  Instead, the overview lists four "key points about men being removed from flights," including "alcohol related issues," "verbal aggression," "non-compliance with safety rules" and "physical altercations."  The third, fourth and fifth reasons women get kicked off of airplanes are, respectively, "poor hygiene," "non-compliance with instructions," and "medical emergencies."  (Call me old fashioned but I'd much rather be seated on a flight next to an "inadequately clothed" woman than next to a verbally aggressive and pugnacious man.)

I suggested that it should not be lost on anyone that incidents in which passengers have been removed from flights or threatened with removal tend to involve women specifically because of how these women were dressed.  It hasn't been.  The DailyMail.com, for example, ran a story last fall reporting four such incidents, the two I cited at the beginning of this essay and two others.  (This article also describes an incident in which a male Trump supporter was thrown off a flight because of the shirt he was wearing but, in contrast to most of the cases involving women, it wasn't because his shirt revealed too much skin but because of the picture and text that were on the shirt, itself.)

This phenomenon - which, so far as I can tell, amounts to institutionalized slut-shaming - is not confined to airlines.  neaToday ran a story back in 2018 (When School Dress Codes Discriminate) that explains how "Student dress codes continue to unfairly target girls and students of color."  It begins:

While a dress code is supposed to make the school environment more conducive to learning, it frequently does the opposite.  In the past year, schools all over the country made national news for the ways they enforce their dress code - asking a student to put duct tape over the holes in her jeans, suspending a student for a skirt that was too short, or sending a student to the office for not wearing a bra - all of which take the focus off learning and place it on girls' bodies.

This article cites one high school, in Massachusetts, in which six out of the nine regulations in its dress code "targeted female students."  A crucial element of such dress codes is that they are based on the archaic view that girls' and women's bodies are so innately sexually arousing that boys and men - utterly powerless to resist such temptation - cannot but be distracted by them.  Accordingly,  the onus to cover up for the benefit of boys and men is placed on girls and women.  As one fourth-grade teacher quoted in the article characterized it, "A boy's education can be compromised by your gender.  Please do what you can to neutralize it." At the same time, such dress codes, according to one of the co-authors of a study issued by the National Women's Law Center in 2018, send the message that "What a girl looks like is more important than what she learns and thinks."   (As noted, this article also describes how school dress codes unfairly penalize and discriminate against Black students and, especially, Black female students.)  

Although my own childhood experience with dress codes differs in important ways from that of middle- and high school girls nowadays, a part of me is still hostile to dress codes because I remain deeply resentful of having been forced to wear what was basically office attire (minus the sports jacket) from the first through the sixth grade.  Back in the 1960s (when I was in elementary school) boys had to wear ties (yes, even in the first grade) and girls had to wear skirts or dresses.  Sneakers, except on gym days, were verboten.  Any infraction would get one sent home or to the principal's office.  This happened to me once when one of my teachers capriciously (since this is what I wore every day) decided that my bolo tie didn't count as a real tie.  Everything that was required by the dress code was, it goes without saying, physically uncomfortable for a young child but beyond this was the complete deprivation of one's self-expression and the negation of one's individuality.  Looking back on my elementary school experiences, it has always seemed to me that the effects of compulsory schooling, if not its explicit purpose, were to enforce social conformity, to suppress individuality, to stifle creativity, to discourage independent thinking, and, of course, to reinforce gender (hence the buttoned up shirts and ties for the boys, the skirts and dresses for the girls). 

What about dress codes for employees?  The dress code at the hospital where I work prohibits bluejeans; this seems perfectly reasonable to me yet it also seems perfectly illogical since denim of any other color is permitted.  What is it about the color indigo that makes bluejeans inappropriate for the office or in a hospital?  It can't be the color because indigo khakis are perfectly okay.  Rather, it seems to be the particular combination of denim and indigo that makes bluejeans unacceptable.  Obviously, this is an example of the power of the cultural meaning that clothing - especially certain articles of clothing - acquires.  Except in certain jobs, jeans (by which most people automatically assume I am speaking about bluejeans, which tends to prove my point) are considered the unofficial uniform of leisure, or downtime.  They are what one wears on weekends.  My ability to perform my job would not be adversely affected one iota if I were to perform it in jeans and yet, if I sought medical care from a healthcare professional, I would be bothered and feel even a little insulted if she walked into the exam room in jeans.  It is unquestionably a social construct - as propriety always is - but that does not make it any less the case that wearing jeans in this context telegraphs a lack of professionalism.  (The first hospital I worked in, NYU Medical Center, prohibited, of all things, ankle socks.  In regard to this the physical therapists in my department used to quip, "nothing says 'unprofessional' like exposed malleoli!")

What about clothing that may be offensive by its very nature because of its cultural meaning?  No one can pretend that a white robe and hood, because of their well-documented history, do not constitute hate speech in and of themselves.  But what about hijabs and abayas?  Are these intrinsically offensive or disruptive in Western contexts?  In 2023, France banned these in public schools on, ostensibly, liberal-secularist grounds.  But the ban has been criticized as Islamaphobic and even mysogynistic.  At the same time, the obligation of women to cover up in in certain Islamic countries, such as Afghanistan, has itself been criticized as a human rights violation and as a manifestation of the oppression of women.  Writing in 2009, Mona Eltahawy argued for a ban on the burqa:

I am a Muslim, I am a feminist and I detest the full-body veil, known as a niqab or burqa.  It erases women from society and has nothing to do with Islam but everything to do with the hatred for women at the heart of the extremist ideology that preaches it.

We must not sacrifice women at the alter of political correctness in the name of fighting a growingly powerful right wing that Muslims face in countries where they live as a minority.

As disagreeable as I often find French President Nicolas Sarkozy, he was right when he said recently, "The burqa is not a religious sign, it is a sign of the subjugation, of the submission of women.  I want to say solemnly that it will not be welcome on our territory."  It should not be welcome anywhere, I would add.

I don't mean to wander too far afield - the topic here is dress codes and, more particularly, the dress codes that airline passengers are required to abide by.  But I raise the examples of white robes and hoods and burqas not necessarily to compare them but to point out that it's not just possible but perfectly reasonable for a person to be deeply offended by one or both of them.  And if the regulation in an airline's Contract of Carriage states that a passenger may be removed from a flight, as Delta's does, "when the passenger's . . . attire . . . creates an unreasonable risk of offense . . . to other passengers," what then?  Ejecting a white-robed and -hooded Klansman from an airplane (preferably, after it has taken off) would seem to be a no-brainer.  But what about a Burqa-wearing Muslim woman?  And how, in this case, would Delta reconcile its policy of not allowing a passenger to cause other passengers offense with its other policy in which it promises not to refuse to provide transportation to any passenger on the basis of, among other things, religion and sex?

Patently offensive symbols or articles of clothing, in some sense, represent less of a grey area.  One would hope that there is, at least for now, still a broad consensus that a swastika displayed on an article of a passenger's clothing is sufficient grounds for removing that passenger from a flight.  But what about a confederate flag appliqué?  What about a MAGA hat?

If dress codes are intrinsically problematic and contradictory - as I believe they are - so, too, are my own feelings about them, as I have already acknowledged.  I will use a dining experience I had at the local Olive Garden several years as a concluding illustration of how and why.  

 

Binghamton, where I live, is a small Rust-Belt metropolis (and the hometown of Rod Serling).  This area is surrounded by farms and countryside but it is also home to one of the nation's premier public universities (Binghamton University) and a number of tech companies.  Within the greater metropolitan area of Binghamton (in the village of Endicott, to be exact) the original campus of IBM stood (and still stands, although IBM has since pulled up stakes, leaving a toxic plume in its wake).  With cultural and economic diversity like this, one sees all types here in all manner of dress: from hardcore rednecks in hunting camo to BU students in crop tops.  Once, when my wife and I were out to dinner, a very slovenly looking man was dining one or two tables away. He was probably about 225 pounds, very hairy, and wearing a very loose-cut tank top, by which I mean to say that the openings for his arms (where the sleeves would have been) descended halfway down his rib cage displaying copious amounts of pimpled skin folds and body hair.  Every time he brought his fork up to his mouth, his axillary hair came prominently into view.  It was a decidedly unappetizing spectacle.  Besides being physically repulsed, I was indignant that there was not a dress code requiring this patron to cover up or, if there were, that it had not been enforced.  

 

As I have examined my reaction to this diner over the years, however, I have had to confront my own inconsistency and subjectivity insofar as dress codes are concerned.  It is these two things - inconsistency and subjectivity - that are the problem at the heart of dress codes.  What if the diner had been not the man whom I have just described but, instead, an attractive, svelte young woman?  Would I have been offended, let alone appalled and disgusted, if someone fitting this description were seated directly in my line of sight wearing a loose-cut tank top?  If the man should be prohibited from wearing a tank top, shouldn't she?  Should we have different dress codes for men and women?  For overweight people and thin people?  For elderly people and young people?  For hairy people and hairless people?  If we insist that the man should cover up, are we fat-shaming him?  If we insist that the young woman should cover up, are we slut-shaming her?  Is having to look at men dining in tank tops the price we have to pay for not slut-shaming young women?  Is slut-shaming young women the price we have to pay for not having to look at men dining in tank tops?  Alternatively, how can one justify, with a straight face, having different dress codes for different types of people depending on what they look like?

 

The only equitable solution to all this is a either a uniform standard for dress codes - on planes, in schools, in restaurants - or no standards at all.  And if there is a standard, whose?  A uniform standard entails drawing the line somewhere.  But where?  Someone, some category, some class, some culturally-significant article of clothing is going to fall outside of that line.  Is it even possible to draw a line anywhere now without offending someone?  For that matter, when has it ever been possible to rub elbows with the rest of humanity, in all its multifariousness, without being offended?

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About me: I am originally from New York City and now live near the Finger Lakes region of New York.  I am a licensed physical therapist and I write about bodily autonomy and human rights, gender, culture, and politics.  I currently serve on the board of directors for the Genital Autonomy Legal Defense & Education Fund, (GALDEF), the board of directors and advisors for Doctors Opposing Circumcision and the leadership team for Bruchim.