[lbo-talk] school uniforms (was: Ehrenreich responds to BDL)

budge budge at el-pleasant.org
Fri Aug 22 09:12:54 PDT 2003


On Fri, 22 Aug 2003 at 11:31am Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
>
> It seems to me that you never had kids in school and had
> to spend hundreds of dollars every few months for the
> "uniforms" pushed on kids by the marketers.

You would be guessing correctly, but I did wear them myself in parochial school.


> Kids who do not wear those "hip" $50 per garment clothes
> are often ridiculed and ostracized by their peers. I was
> lucky that my own kid was an urban punk, but for my wife
> it is a constant struggle.

My experience being (easily) the poorest kid in a very affluent Catholic schools is that 'uniform' clothes act a lot like race. That is, if everyone is supposed to be wearing the 'same' thing, there are still potential differences in the quality or fit of these 'uniform' clothes much like how natives and long time residents of New Orleans can (and do) classify people by race in a fashion that outsiders will fail to understand because they will think these people all look the same i.e. 'mixed'.


> School uniforms are a much preferred alternative to the
> products of sweatshop-exploiting garment pushers.

I suppose you have some basis for assuming that uniform clothes are all sweat free and all stylish ones are 'sweaty'?

<http://nosweatapparel.com/>

-- no Onan

"superior sound quality"



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