Should boys be allowed to wear hip hop clothes, a related thread
 

Since we have a thread about the "sexualization of daughters", I feel that we should also have one about boys and what they wear. I would think that the male equivilant to the Britney/Christina esque outfits that girls wear would be anything very hip-hop. Should boys be allowed to wear that? Do you think it is rude (since the styles may be gang-related)? What do you think is appropriate for boys to wear while at school?

**pulls up lawn chair and waits for bottles to fly as "Racist!!" is shouted repeatedly**

Why the hell should they not be allowed to?

Maybe it's my whole "going to a school with no real dress code" bringing up, but I don't understand why people are so obsessed with clothes.

And I don't think you can correlate "hip hop clothing" and "overly sexualized clothing" -- two different issues.

Plus, as Jules said, this thread is a locking-up waiting to happen.

What, exactly, constitutes hip hop clothing?

haha, AXJules. I was reading the forum question and was like: What the??? :rolleyes:

I'll be back when I am able to give a civil answer.

But before I leave I would love to know what constitutes "hip-hop" style and why we as Americans are still on this "gang-related" clothing kick?

I think that Blacks are blamed far too much for the baggy clothes hanging off the butt look and I hate that when such "Black style of dress" is referred to, it always seems to boil down to "hip hop" and "gang-related."

all right. i'm out.

<<< pulls up chair with huge bag of Terra Blues and a cooler full of Sam Adams
Wanna beer? Catch. :cool:

In the school setting I believe that boys (or girls for that matter) should not be able to where super-oversized clothing.

This is due to safety.

I will soon be teaching in schools in my area that are growing in violence yet the administration are still refusing to put in place any type of metal detectors. Their only solution is a fat-balding cop that much rather check out the overly-sexualized young girls than check the kids who are coming through the back door.

Too many weapons can be hidden underneath oversized clothing. I frankly don't want to take the chance of some kid coming into school with a gun in his pants that you couldn't tell that it was there due to his choice of style.

But on a lighter note, after seeing too many kids running up/down the stairs with baggy jeans to end up falling up/down the stairs due to tripping on their jeans and cracking themselves a good one is another reason for not permitting children to have oversized clothing. (Now, how's that for a run-on sentence?)

Weapons can also be hidden in backpacks, lockers, cars, non-baggy clothing, taped to the body, etc. mu_agd told me a story about how in her middle school, backpacks were banned -- so some kid brought a knife to school in a teddy bear.

Banning wardrobe choices won't change the problem. Kids are a lot smarter than most of y'all give them credit for. They'll come up with new places to hide weapons if that's what they really think is important.

Also, if they're tripping on their clothes, that's their own damn fault! Why do we feel the need to protect kids (many of whom, in this case, are 13 years old or older and certainly are smart enough to comprehend that they might trip on their clothes) from any possible complication that could arise from their own choices?

Learning through experience isn't such a bad thing . . .

This is so true. Hip Hop was born in New York. Hip Hop clothing became fashionable in the schools, as the crime rate was climbing in the schools. Here we are, years later, and more kids are wearing Hip Hop clothing than ever before, but the crime rate has plummeted. There is no correlation between Hip Hop clothing and crime.

Maybe it's my school uniform raised voice talking, but I think kids should go to school looking well put together. When I was at school, we weren't allowed to have untucked shirts, "noticable" make-up (most of us didn't wear make-up, but some of the "parachute kids" from Hong Kong (high school aged students who live in a big suburban home with sibling or other relative not too much older than they) did try to cross the line) or nail polish, unnatural hair colour, etc. Faculty would ask students to tuck in their shirt if they weren't tucked, and would ask girls to wash off their make-up if it was too noticable. Most teachers had bottles of nail polish remover in their desks. I would say that we girls were pretty well put together compared to many other schools (including some schools with uniforms), even when our skirts were too short.

Why?

I mean, I understand if you want to be "well put together" but what's the justification for forcing everybody to be?

I think it makes a better learning environment when you aren't concentrating on what everyone else is wearing. It promotes school spirit too, just like wearing uniforms in athletics promotes team spirit.

You send your children dressed the way that believe to be right, and don't worry about how other children are dressed. M'kay?

Personally, I wasn't sitting there in class worrying about what other people were wearing, but maybe that was just me. Have they done studies that show that schools with uniforms have better-performing students than schools without uniforms?

And as for school spirit, I think that it could easily have the opposite effect -- kids who don't want to be wearing uniforms will just have another reason to dislike going to school than they had before.

I think it makes for a better learning environment when kids can dress how they feel comfortable and learn to deal with the fact that not everybody dresses the same way they do. They'll have to learn this eventually when they go out into the "real world" unless they're incredibly sheltered their entire lives. I also don't think it's the school's job to promote school spirit. Some kids will have it and some won't, and there's nothing wrong with that.

Yes, but school uniforms and very strict dress codes do tone down the peer pressure, even if it is just by a little. In high school, I never really had to worry if my clothes were better or worse than Jenny's or Katie's because I didn't really know what they owned. On grub days (which costs $1 and happens like once a term), we mostly wore sweaters and jeans , if there wasn't a theme (and often there is!). Some people believe that kids should be exploring their interests, trying to find themselves. Well, they can do that after school and on weekends. School is not a place for that. School should be strict, not just in academics, but in what they wear.

Why?

I'm sorry, I just think that what was applicable to you isn't necessarily applicable to the rest of the world, and you're still failing to convince me otherwise.

remember when west beverly wanted to implement a dress code and the juniors told brandon and andrea that they would go chant "donna martin graduates" with them as long as they help them make sure that never passed? see, kids don't like dress codes!

Did you go to a private or religious school? The dress codes you described sound like private or Catholic school.

I had a dress code at my private school. The teachers made a big deal if you didn't observe the dress code. You had to either sit in the library or go home and change if you violated it. Personally I would have preferred a uniform because there was too much room for interpretation in the dress code.

"Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well... If you have a word like 'good', what need is there for a word like 'bad'? 'Ungood' will do just as well... Or again, if you want a stronger version of 'good', what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like 'excellent' and 'splendid' and all the rest of them? 'Plusgood' covers the meaning, or 'doubleplusgood' if you want something stronger still.... In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words; in reality, only one word."

I went to a high school with almost no dress code at all (you had to wear shoes, pants or shorts, and a shirt), and very little social structure. A kid that was a year older than me became a Rhodes Scholar via Harvard. A fourth of my graduating class got into one of the eight Ivy Leage schools.

Success in school, and successful schools have little to do with dress code. Dress code is sometimes used to compensate for other problems by imposing an order. What makes for a successful learning environment is involved parents, and competent teachers. I'd rather put my children in a school that works and has almost no dress code, as compared to a school that is imposing a dress code to help fight deeper problems.

I think it's more about looking decent. My dad will tell my nephews to pull thier pants up if he sees them with thier pants sagging. Just like my dad will tell me to pull up my shirt or cover up if ANY part of my chest is showing. lol. I guess the big deal is that they don't want people to look thuggish or ghetto. (And no, I'm not being racist, cause I know that there are white, mexican, asian, etc wear "hip hop" clothes.)

Private, girls-only university prep...the VP always had extra uniforms in her office, so if anyone violated uniform code, she'd be sent to the VP to get what she needed.

I completely agree. Dress codes address the symptom instead of addressing the cause. From what I've seen, they very rarely make any significant changes in the school environment -- they just make a handful of the problems less obvious, but they're still going on there beneath the surface. If you've got a school where class distinction is an issue, uniforms are NOT going to change that one iota.

(This coming from a future educator who has done some reading on what makes schools successful -- and dress codes are never mentioned. ;) Not to mention the fact that chances are that you're not going to get improved results by making school LESS fun than kids already think it is!)

It's interesting that people say that dress codes don't really matter, because in Ontario, Catholic school students tend to do better than their public school counterparts. Catholic schools, at least the high schools, have uniforms while public schools don't.

Note: The majority of Catholic schools in Ontario receive full government funding and are run just like public schools.

Correlation does not imply causation.

Exactly. There are hundreds of factors that could have to do with that. Maybe Catholic families are more involved in their children's educations than non-Catholics or stress academic achievement more? etc.

I've yet to see a single study that shows that uniforms make a difference in otherwise comparable educational environments.

Since the birth of rock n roll there were naysayers that predicted the boys who dressed like Elvis or Chuck Berry and wore their hair in pompadour that they would be the downfall of society. The same thing was said when boys emulated the haircuts and dressing styles of the Beatles, Rolling Stones, or Grateful Dead. These babyboomers now are in Congress and running corporations. Somehow they made it through.

Um, seriously, I love you.

I'm not sure why people are so concerned about other people's children. If they turn out to be hellions from wearing "hip-hop" :rolleyes: clothes, then that's their parents' fault and has nothing to do with you.

Overly baggy pants look effing stupid. I don't care if the people wearing them are white, black, brown, yellow or green or what they are hiding or not hiding in there. I think they should be banned for the same reason dark lipliner/pale lips should be banned - IT LOOKS STUPID!!

The only thing I will say about uniforms is if your school is going to go that route, go all the way. Have a real uniform - don't do this "khakis and a white or blue collared shirt" crap. That only results in kids hating useful clothing (like khakis) and it does nothing to prevent class distinctions, when Susie's shirt is from Lauren and Becky's is from KMart.

I also think some people are forgetting what little bitches junior high girls can be about something as lame as what someone's wearing. I would be more for uniforms for that reason than for the students' "performance."

This is actually location dependant. Where I grew up, public schools do much better. Where is your source on the "overall" stat? I grew up hearing about how Catholic school sucked academically, so I'm a skeptic.

The decision to move to uniforms is open to any Ontario school council. It's just that Catholic highschools have been the first to do it.

AND on that note... all the boys in the Catholic system wear their uniform "hip hop style" anyways. There is no rule saying that the uniform has to fit. <- at least in Waterloo and anywhere else I've been.

I agree - the whole look is just stupid.

I also agree about if you're going to do uniforms, do them all the way. I was in private school for 4 years, the first 3 we had a dress code and the last year was uniforms, and I swore off khakis for about 10 years after I left...lol.

Kids are still going to make fun of something. With uniforms, it may not be Jenny's pair of jeans, but now they're probably going to make fun of something more permanent, like her looks or something physical.

Besides, now that they're not spending daddy's money on designer jeans, they have more money available to them for cigarettes and drugs.

With uniforms, it's often HOW one wears it...my school had cardigans for a couple of years, but anyone who wore them was teased endlessly (they were really big, almost blazer-like). They got rid of them because it was so unpopular.

I don't think you should use Catholic schools as a comparison. My brother's friend's father is a VP in a Catholic school and many catholic schools have serious problems. There is a lot of violence with in many catholic school. I agree with Russ. Uniforms often treat the symptoms of bigger problems rather than the cause.

When the teacher threw himself down the stairs (yes he did it to himself) and blamed the neo-nazi skin head at my school and a certain dress code came into effect. No docs or army boots with white or red laces. This doesn't solve anything. All it does is make the kids with these behaviours less visable. It doesn't help them see how misguided their views are.

Re: Should boys be allowed to wear hip hop clothes, a related thread
 

They should be able to wear them. Hip hop wear doesn't = Gang related wear. There are certain colors and numbers and that's about it. But it's dumb to me because if that be the case, everything a little boy wears would be restricted.

Imperial1