The Scandalous Babydoll Dress: Are Schools Too Nitpicky About Dress Codes?

When 13-year-old Gabrielle Garcia got dressed for school last week, she thought her ensemble of babydoll dress and tights was perfectly fine for a day of learning. But some of the administration at her school, Lavilla School of the Arts, didn’t agree. According to Action News Jax, Garcia was slapped with an in-school suspension because the hemline of the dress fell ever-so-slightly above her knee.

Gabrielle’s mom, Misty Garcia, posted an image of her daughter’s ensemble to Facebook, expressing frustration over the citation and explaining why the incident prompted her to take her daughter out of school entirely last Thursday. “As a parent I feel she is dressed modest, I had to pick her up because she would have also received a tardy referral even tho she was at school 20 minutes early,” she wrote, noting that students are allowed two such tardy citations. “I feel that is a bit strict considering these children come from all over Jacksonville. I am a little heated because 2 other teachers said she looks just fine.” Misty says she was called soon after she dropped off Gabrielle, and didn’t have time to bring her child another outfit before school started. Gabrielle would have had to serve an in-school suspension over the dress had she not pulled her out entirely.

Apparently, the principal of the school decided that the fuss over Gabrielle’s dress was much ado about nothing, and called her mother to apologize, and also to say that the school would be speaking with the teacher who wrote Gabrielle up.

Dress codes and uniforms are part of being in school, but sometimes, well-meaning adults looking to teach children discipline can go overboard in implementing the rules. A student at a school in Chepstow, South Wales, for example, recently made headlines for being written up because her shoes were too chunky and couldn’t be polished — even though the uniform rules said nothing about shoes needing to be polished, and her shoes were exactly what the dress code called for, which was “black leather or leather-look shoes with a low heel.”

We can understand the importance of having a uniform or dress code at a school. “It levels the playing field for all kids, particularly ZIP code-wise, so every kid can afford to go in and not be worried about a brand name or who’s wearing what,” Michele Borba, child, parenting, and education expert and author of UnSelfie, tells Yahoo Style. “That said, consistency is absolutely critical amongst the staff as to what constitutes the dress code, and it must be consistent for the parents as well as the kids. What will happen if you’re not consistent is this type of situation, and it backfires.”

Borba says that while she is a proponent of uniforms and dress codes, obsessive adherence to them can be an inconvenience to everyone, and ultimately take away from the main point of school. “People don’t realize how much time and effort it takes to enforce [a dress code] in terms of discipline at the school,” she explains. “It is also a tremendous amount of time and effort, I assume, for the principal, who has to review everything, which is why I think the bottom line is: Let’s get down to what really matters — and that is, kids going to school, to do one thing only, and that’s to learn.”

She also says that though rules are to be followed, being too persnickety about them is not advisable. “You take up so much time and energy because of what [kids are] wearing, even having parents get into this nitpickiness. In reality, it might have been a lot easier to go, ‘Eh, maybe [her dress] was a little too short,’ or ‘Hey, next time we’ll change it to this,’ instead of making this a huge third-degree. It takes away from the environment of the school and learning.”

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