Why One Middle School Has Adopted Gender-Neutral Uniforms
Gender-neutral clothing is becoming increasingly popular — in the streets, on runways, and even when it comes to official outfits, as recently seen with the British Royal Air Force doing away with skirts, as well as with schools in the U.K. doing away with gender-based student uniforms. Now a New Zealand middle school, Dunedin North Intermediate, is jumping on the bandwagon, eliminating designated boys’ and girls’ uniforms in favor of allowing students to opt for any official pieces they wish to wear.
So if you’re a boy and you want to pull a Jaden Smith, you’re free to style yourself in a skirt. If you’re nonbinary and want to wear culottes one day and a kilt the next, that is your prerogative. Or you can exclusively wear shorts and trousers to school if you’re a girl and would prefer not to risk a Marilyn Monroe moment on a windy day.
Principal Heidi Hayward said that it is the students who inspired the move. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, soon after Hayward started working at the school, a few young women asked her why they were required to wear skirts every day. “If I was told that I was expected to wear a skirt every day to work because I’m a female, well, I can tell you what my response would be,” she said. “This was a good example of where we [were] out of step with society’s norms, so we said ‘fair enough’ and changed it.”
Soon after the complaint, girls were permitted to wear pants and then culottes, but shady comments from students still obsessed with the gender designation of the pieces caused Hayward to scrap “norms” altogether.
And the move makes sense, after all, as women wear trousers, men wear skirts, and at the end of the day, it’s just clothes, and the kids are at school to learn. Allowing them to have school-appropriate options, and not making a big deal about who is allowed to have those options, takes the pressure off of kids who wish to wear whatever.
“This is, I’m sure, a welcomed ‘about time’ policy change that most parents — and kids — will applaud,” child psychologist Michele Borba tells Yahoo Style. “I’ve been on many a school campus with a uniform policy for girls wearing skirts, and they look half frozen. Pants are practical, and the business and fashion worlds embrace pantsuits for women.” (Hello, Pantsuit Nation!)
Going deeper, gender-neutral uniforms could go so far as to help prevent bullying, according to child development and education expert Ann-Marie Hayes of Australia, where proposals are being considered at schools across the country. “If we put the well-being of our students at the forefront … we are ensuring that you can come to school and feel respected and have a safe place to be yourself,” she said.
Similarly, a 2014 Guardian piece looked at uniforms as a jumping-off point for teaching kids about equality. “Uniforms should do what their name suggests: unify students, instead of dividing them,” the piece noted. “Doing so won’t suddenly resolve all gender disparity, but it would be a reminder that — in schools, at least — we are all expected to set our intellectual incline at the same level. It would also reduce the endless list of awkward choices faced by people who, for whatever reason, find gender identification difficult.”
Last June, 80 U.K. state schools adopted gender-neutral uniform policies. “It’s about recognizing the rights of students who feel they might not fit into the binary genders. It’s less of a big deal to the students than you might think,” Liana Richards, deputy head teacher at Uplands Community College, told the Guardian. “We haven’t seen that much difference yet, although some girls have made the conscious decision to wear the trousers uniform, which has to be worn with a tie.”
The bottom line is, kids can learn whether they’re wearing pants or a skirt. And if school is about learning, then why not let students wear what makes them most comfortable? Now, if only U.S. schools would start to get on board…
Read more from Yahoo Style + Beauty:
Teen Made Her Sister the Best Shirt to Fight Dress Code Injustices
Hundreds of Girls Were Sent Home From School Because of Their Skirts
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