toledoblade.com --

Take a walk around a local mall sometime, and you'll see the fashion offenders everywhere.

They're wearing belly shirts, ripped jeans, Bud Light T-shirts, or saggy pants.

Actually these outfits are fine for Westfield Shoppingtown Franklin Park - but take these same outfits to many area school districts and the reaction will be much different.

School administrators see these kinds of clothes as a disturbance to the learning environment. Too much skin is a distraction, or at least not appropriate for the classroom.

Many students see things differently. For them, these clothes can talk. They say: I'm young. I'm fashionable. I'm funny.

"Frequently, clothing is called a second skin," said Elizabeth Rhodes, director of the Fashion School at Kent State University. "We not only dress for who we are, we dress for who we want to be."

Especially for teenagers.

"It's a chance to see how much can I push the envelope," she said.

So while a teacher at Clay High School in Oregon made freshman Cary Burnette take off his "Fresh Jugs" T-shirt (featuring a woman and two milk jugs) because of its sexual innuendo, he saw it as a missed opportunity for self-expression.

"I was just like looking for laughs," he said. "Even the teacher was laughing when she said to take it off."

He happened to have a white T-shirt that he could wear, or he could have ended up making another statement as he wore the school's yellow "Dress Code Violator" shirt.

"It's kind of funny," said his buddy, Matt Verdell. "You can get [dress code violator] pants, too."

School officials like Kevin Rupp at Bowsher High School in South Toledo said they don't have too much trouble enforcing their policies, but there are certain items that kids want to wear year after year.

"For the females, it's the belly-showing shirts and the spaghetti strap-type things," the assistant principal said. "For the guys, it's pull up your pants.

"This is school, not the mall," Mr. Rupp explained. "This is an educational institution, and it's not a social event. The expectations are that you dress accordingly."

Of course, when Toledo Public Schools' high schools go to uniforms next year, the whole debate will be moot there.

Officials at other schools report similar issues, often with the additions of T-shirts promoting tobacco or alcohol products or containing sexual innuendo. At Springfield High School, ripped jeans can be an issue, too, though students sometimes protest that's all they can buy, according to assistant principal Steve Gwin.

Usually, the kids don't push too hard. For example, at Anthony Wayne High School, where dress code offenders are required to change their clothes, 90 percent of them "miraculously" have something else to wear in their locker, said Principal Jim Conner.

Ms. Rhodes, who has a doctorate in consumer behavior, said there is hope that students eventually will give up on showing so much skin and find new ways to push the fashion envelope at school.

"Everything is saying that this bare-skinned look is going to go away ... We get tired of looking at people's belly buttons," she said, though she added that it may take a little longer for the trend to make it from the coasts to the Midwest.

Michelle Couch, 20, a junior at Bowling Green State University from Findlay majoring in secondary education, has mixed feelings about the dress codes of her high school days, particularly things like outlawing spaghetti straps.

"For me, it's just summer attire," she said. "I can imagine some people wearing it to show their body."

"Whatever you're comfortable in, you should be able to wear," said her friend Ashleigh Nye, a BGSU junior from near Zanesville, Ohio.

Like the jeans they both have with small rips in them.

"Right now that stuff's the style," Ms. Couch said. "Ripped jeans are in."

At least they could wear hoodies, which grabbed some headlines when Bluewater shopping center in Great Britain outlawed them as part of a crackdown on anti-social behavior because they were seen as intimidating.

So what do the clothes that violate our local dress codes say about the students who wear them?

Could be that the wearers are fashionable or have money, Ms. Nye said. But just labeling them forbidden creates another association that stuck with Ms. Nye even after she went to college, especially when it came to spaghetti straps and flip-flop sandals.

"It was really hard for me making the transition to college," she said. "I felt bad for wearing it."

Bridgitte Carroll and some of her eighth-grader friends from Timberstone Junior High School in Sylvania Township said that some of the clothes they consider cute or summery are unfairly kept out of school.

"We can't wear no-sleeves, which I don't think … shows too much," she said.

"I think we should be able to wear it if you wear it appropriately," said Shelby Harris, 14.

And ... cue the guy in the "I swear it's this big" T-shirt, who walk by at the mall. So much for appropriate.

Contact Ryan E. Smith at:
ryansmith@theblade.com
or 419-724-6103.

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