Do you believe that it is ok for a boy to wear a skirt to school if he is not in Scotland wearing a kilt? How about a Chris Crocker styled wig, complete with the make-up of Tammy Faye Baker on a male high school student? Should this be in bounds for the school dress code or should this be disallowed on school time?

Along the same lines, is it acceptable for a female student to wear a tuxedo to her Sr. Prom or should she conform to society’s standards and wear a dress? Is that the same type of situation?

The NYT recently ran an article checking out the answers to some of these questions on a cross-country basis. Not surprisingly, the answers varied widely from state to state.

In a Florida high school, for example, the students must dress “in keeping with their gender”. The interesting thing to me is that forty or fifty years ago, that would have meant that women could not wear pants or jeans. In other places, however, students dressing in manners “not keeping with their gender” are allowed a lot more leeway.

My age is top-secret, but I can definitely say that this wasn’t really an issue when I went to school. People stuck clearly to their gender lines in school bounds- it wasn’t as socially acceptable to cross-dress at school, nor was a person’s sexuality really an open topic in the town that I grew up in. The only time the boys wore skirts was during Homecoming skits that were pretty much exact replicas of the song-and-dance routine from the frat guys in  “Revenge of the Nerds”.

Some of the school officials who are against “dressing across gender lines” have given a few reasons for their “rules and guidelines”. A few are concerned for the safety of the students, saying that the students will get beat up after school or discriminated against by other students. I say that this is always a definite possibility, but shouldn’t it be the students choice? (And will a girl in a tuxedo at a prom really face violence? I don’t think so.)

Others say that the cross-dressing is too distracting for other classmates at the school. I would have to say that this may have to be on a case by case basis. If anyone (male or female) came to class in full drag-queen regalia, it might be a little distracting, but someone dressing outside of their gender, wearing a simple wig, or some makeup probably wouldn’t be too bad.