Kids (as well as adults) choose clothes that they wear -- or modify the school uniforms, playing skirt lengths, pants widths, etc. -- not to "express one's individuality" but (1) to perform their assigned genders and (2) to signal to one another (and to the public) what factions (or tribes or cliques or however you want to call them) they belong to or want to join.
At 8:55 AM -0700 8/22/03, mike larkin wrote:
>As Katha Pollitt has pointed out, uniforms are also demeaning to
>women forced to wear skirts, etc.
Generally speaking, though, women have more personal freedom than men when it comes to fashion in rich nations today. Women who wear pants are regarded as "normal" now, but men who wear skirts (and other items strongly marked "feminine") still aren't and therefore must confront unwritten codes of men's social "uniforms." -- Yoshie
* Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>