on "not being a distraction"

It seems that school dress code policies are coming under scrutiny for slutshaming--for enforcing dress codes for girls in order to provide a distraction-free learning environment for boys.

It is definitely unfair--and unfair in an oppressively harmful way--to police girls' clothing choices for that reason. No question about that.

It is also true that part of learning how to be a grownup involves showing courtesy to other persons and respecting their worth and dignity no matter how distracting anything about them might be.

I am nevertheless uncomfortable with arguments, implicit and otherwise, that suggest that girls--or anyone--should just dress however they want, wherever they want, for no better reason than that they want to, and that anyone who says otherwise is engaging in slutshaming. There are many parts of life that come with dress codes or to which informal rules of sartorial etiquette are attached: We wear our very best clothes in black or some other somber color to funerals. We wear our very best clothes in brighter colors to weddings. We wear enormous hats to parties thrown for the Kentucky Derby, and we wear smaller (but possibly similarly elaborate) hats on Easter Sunday, if we are a member of a church where hats are still de rigeur. We wear costumes on Halloween and we wear academic regalia when we graduate with an advanced degree. We make sure to put on a neatly pressed suit for job interviews, and we take care to put on older clothes when we paint the house.

This is to say that for pretty much every part of life, there are some norms governing clothing choice so that we do not create an inappropriate distraction--one does not wear an elaborate white dress to a wedding at which one is not the bride no matter how lovely one might look because to do so would draw inappropriate attention to oneself. One does not wear one's Halloween costume to work on the day after the Halloween party, no matter how many compliments one received on the evening previous, because to do so would disrupt the flow of work--and it would likely violate the employer's dress code. 

Supporting--and even strengthening--dress codes is not automatically or necessarily a perpetuation of rape culture. We seem to have lost a vocabulary or value-orientation that allows us to say that the things we do in public are done, in some important respects, to and for the public. That the things we do are not ours alone when done in public space. And for saying this, I will probably be accused (even if kindly and generously) of promoting victim-blaming. I am not doing this. I am saying that a response that says "anyone can and should be able to do whatever they want, whenever they want, however they want so long as it does not physically harm anyone else or encroach upon the genuine rights of other persons" is too thin; it promotes a hyper-individualistic solipsism that falsely imagines that the things I do can and should have no effect on other persons, and that if they do have such an effect, then the other persons are at fault for letting themselves be affected. But in our current climate, to say that something has an effect on other persons slides to the extreme that claims that the effect is totally irresistible, absolutely quantifiable, and that it is tantamount to deliberate, culpable intent.

I remember vividly my sartorial epiphany in college. My freshman year I lived on campus and only worked part time, so I was able to go to class in pajamas and slippers, as many freshmen do at some point. I experimented with very short shorts and very short tops (and no, nothing terrible happened--no one ever even gave me a hard time). The summer before my sophomore year of college I moved off campus and began working full time. Since I worked most days, my work clothes were my primary wardrobe. I dressed like a little professional out of convenience and frugality (I could not have afforded multiple wardrobes; and, like most other college students, my weight changed enough to eliminate from practical possibility the wardrobe from my freshman year), and I was caught quite off guard by how my change in dress changed the attitudes of those around me toward my person and their estimation of my worth, work, abilities, and authority. Suddenly there were students who assumed I thought myself superior to them by dressing differently (which baffled me, as I was poorer than most of my peers). People started asking me for directions on campus and in the town in which I lived and worked. I received much better customer service than I ever did when I dressed like a typical student.

I am glad I got to learn about the effect of clothing choices in different social settings, and I am glad I learned it freely, if entirely accidentally. Removing dress code requirements, however, makes for fewer, not more, places wherein a young person can learn about those differences, especially since the only conversation we have about how other people should dress is overwhelmingly dominated by the fear that any acknowledgment or investigation of the effect of clothing promotes victim-blaming and rape culture.

Saint Chanel, pray for us

"If you're sad, add more lipstick and attack" —Coco Chanel

I am at once the richest and the poorest...now where's that prince?

My own privilege has hardly been more visible to me than now: I have no income right now, and that seems like a marvelously amusing joke. It feels free and exciting, like a new game I can master. This is, of course, obviously, genuinely, not the experience of most people who have no income. I have absolute faith that this is a temporary situation for me (and, indeed, it looks as though I shall have an income this fall), and I am very well provisioned.

Mostly, this feeling of luxury comes from the food I have been eating. Every last bite has been delightful, an almost unlooked-for surprise. Split-pea soup filled with chunks of glazed ham, studded with chunks of orange carrots, and then, as if that weren't sufficiently rich and hearty, filled with freshly made, very buttery croutons. Fresh hot coffee every morning (with fancy-pants organic milk, no less), but with the coffee? Toasted cinnamon-swirl bread, rich and golden with eggs and milk, just barely sweet. Dishes of cold sectioned grapefruit. Mugs of hot earl grey tea. Have I ever fed myself so well?

But then there's the handmade, organic soap I get to use every morning in the shower. I bought it cheap (scrap sacks that hold a pound of soap for just a little more than the price of one bar), and I bought it during times when I had a little extra cash on hand. And the lotion I bought by the gallon a year or so back--lasts forever and I am all set.

This isn't poverty. Not this. And if it weren't for all those loans to pay back, I'd be quite content like this, employing my metaphorical spindle, shuttle, and needle and living in luxurious simplicity.

things that I love

words:

• vetiver
• velvet
• clarinet

experiences:

• feeling rain hit the top of my hat and feeling safely enclosed
• having my head scratched
• the feeling of cashmere against soft bare skin
• smooth-shaven legs on crisp sheets 

things:

• color, line, shape, and texture
• bright, rich, almost-matte lipstick
• flowers and trees
• poetry
• music
• perfume

kinds of people:

• old women who wear dramatic clothing
• people with deep-burning fire in them

Meditations on some poems by Mary Oliver

I want to tattoo poetry down my arms and on each side of every finger. Backward and frontward on my forehead so I can read it in the mirror and others can read it on my face. I want to carve the words in pain and joy along every visible part of me so I won't forget, won't be able to forget, will be forced to remember.

For how long will you continue to listen to those dark shouters,
caution and prudence?
Fall in! Fall in!

How can I keep from forgetting the words, the phrases, the entire whole poems that pluck some string of my soul and make it sing, make it vibrate the whole length of me, make me quiver with hope and anticipation, make me know that I am, in spite of myself, alive?

Let me
    keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be
    astonished.

How can I learn to remember to turn my attention at every moment to what it is that matters, to attend to life and the living of it? How can I turn the face of my heart away from the petty dim loves to which fear clings and toward the abundant brilliance that will shatter these poor eyes and melt this brittle shell I've built to enclose the weak but living root of me?

Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
    and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy

How to remember to let myself break apart, a little more each moment, until I am transformed, until I am made wholly new?

Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?

miracles

Every loaf of bread I have ever made looks to me like an absolute, not even kidding miracle. I am delighted after each rise. Pleased and still a little apprehensive when shaping the loaves. Hopeful and eager as they bake. And then, steaming and cooling on a rack on my table, I can't help but grin. Bread. There is bread and I have made it. Every loaf produces all these feelings. Every burnished loaf is like tangible, edible hope: I will eat; I can do difficult things; I can make things that are beautiful; I have not lost my capacity for delight.

Every completed loaf produces a set of feelings very like those that well up every time I listen to the opening bit of the first movement of Mozart's 7th symphony: Both can pull joy from deep within me even when I am convinced that the world and everything in it is irredeemably terrible.

amazing grace

I got lost once when I was very small. There was an Easter egg hunt in a large field near a wooded area (so far as I can recall or picture). My memories are not strong but I do remember the stories that were told to me about what happened.

I was confident, happy, and friendly in my earliest years. I made friends easily. At this Easter egg hunt, I decided to move toward the underexplored areas, away from where everyone was crowded and searching. I am sure I reasoned I would have the best chances at finding the eggs everyone else was missing. So I wandered farther and farther away from the designated hunt area. My absence was noted and then no one was searching for eggs any longer; they all were searching for me.

Finding me must have caused some irritation. There was no wailing small blond girl sitting on some tree stump, grateful to have been found. No pitiable wounded or scared child holding her arms out for rescue. Instead, there I was, pleased and happy, walking back in the direction of the hunting grounds, hand in hand with some nice stranger. I had no idea I'd done anything wrong. I'd had no idea of the danger: the trees, the train tracks I'd crossed, the stranger I met did not appear as threats or sources of worry to me.

I didn't know I'd been lost so it never occurred to me to be frightened.