The latest attempt to create an actual functioning school dress code was recently completed, and now the battle lines have been drawn. On one side is Jordan School District, parents and teachers; on the other side, students.
Clearly, it's not a fair fight.
The school district is going to need more help.
Jordan's school board recently released a revised dress code that includes words such as "cleavage," "underwear," "spaghetti straps" and "thigh" — believed to be a first in the annals of Utah dress codes — just to make sure nothing falls between the cracks. So to speak.
Are they talking about high school — or a cocktail lounge?
The school board reasoned that it was time to put its foot down before students thought of any more creative ways to wear their underwear, such as over their heads.
The students' response: Hey, what a great idea!
Left unchecked, students would soon be doing other bizarre things, like piercing their tongues.
Oh, wait, they already do that.
Dress codes always create tension on both sides. The kids' point of view: It's difficult to accept fashion guidelines from a generation that wore Nehru jackets, leisure suits, collars big enough to fly a 747, double-knit polyester slacks, miniskirts, skin-tight jeans and shoulder-length hair. Leisure suits are still the worst thing to land on the fashion runway since chain mail.
The kids of the '60s and '70s grew up somehow and began to dress like "adults," which in their case meant wearing the collars of their golf shirts in the upright and locked position. Groovy.
Now these same people are writing dress codes. Is that rich, or what? It's like asking Marlon Brando to write a diet book.
The adults' point of view: Most of today's fashions appear to have been based upon a dare. Piercings of the eyebrow, tongue, nose and navel come to mind. Tattoos. Blue hair (or any color not found in the animal kingdom). Spiked hair. Shaved hair. The school hallway looks like Pirates of the Caribbean. Some of these kids have more holes in their head than an oboe.
Dress codes struggle to keep pace. Twenty years ago, earrings for guys didn't even show up on the radar screen. Any boy who wore an earring would have been held upside down over a toilet bowl and dunked repeatedly. Now he could be captain of the football team.
Another fashion trend nobody saw coming: Baggy pants worn halfway down the bottom. In real estate terms, it's a view lot with full southern exposure.
Meanwhile, girls wear thongs with low riders, the net effect being that classmates get a view of the top of the underwear, along with a midday moonrise, as it were.
Somehow the word underwear has been sadly misunderstood. Exactly what part of "under" don't they understand? My theory: Their knit tops are so tight that they cut off blood flow to the brain. On the flip side you get an exposed belly button, a small eye looking out at the world from just above the waistband.
(Note to Class of '02: Trust me, no matter how hip you think you are today, you're going to hate your high school pictures 10 years from now. You'll take one look at your yearbook pictures and say, "What a dork I was," with great shock. And you'll be right. Your kids will have a field day with those pictures. My suggestion: Burn them.)
You know things are bad when the Iron County School District releases a dress code banning body piercings and tattoos — for the teachers. Last month an anonymous faculty member sent a letter to the editor saying female students dressed "like hookers."
If Jordan students ignore the new code, they could get sent home. Here's a better idea: Make them wear a leisure suit.
Doug Robinson's column runs on Tuesdays. E-mail drob@desnews.com.