Of dress codes and uncodes

Illustration/Ravi Jadhav

A Few days ago, I was going to speak at a panel, which featured some stellar names in feminism, at a business school. I thought it would be interesting for my younger colleagues to have the opportunity to hear the other speakers and so, asked the organisers if they might attend. While waiting for it to start, I got a call from my colleague, saying that the security guard wouldn't let one of them in because one of them was wearing shorts.

This colleague doesn't conform to girly dressing, and like many young people today, often wears those longer shorts, which don't quite reach your knees. I relayed this to the faculty in a state of some amazement. "Oh, that's against the dress code here," I was told.

Some confusion followed. After all, my colleague wasn't a student. So, should the dress code apply to her? The dean could tell the security guard to let her in, perhaps, but would it be right to tell him to break the rules? Every propriety was discussed and a solution was suggested: a student would go down with a dupatta. My colleague could tie it sarong style. This did not work (no shock) and conforming to their own code of honour, all my colleagues, headed back to the office.

The idea of a dress code is a complicated one. Some formalities are worth maintaining. But, college students surely don't have to. Being young is partly about breaking norms in order to find your own style and voice, and college is one place we try it out. We have heard nevertheless of colleges imposing dress codes on women as a kind of moral policing. When I brought up the irony of discussing issues like #MeToo and workplace harassment while having this dress code, I was given to understand that it wasn't a moral position. Rather, because a lot of speakers are from corporate backgrounds, when they come in, the potential of being noticed and hired is always present, and so, you must convey the 'right' impression at all times. From here, the proprieties of how the genders behave with each other, and needless intimacies entered the conversation seamlessly.

I had encountered the same issue some years ago in a well-known business college in Pune. Here students could not wear shorts, capri pants or sleeveless clothes. The reasoning was mixed. On the one hand, this formality prepares students for corporate life; on the other, I was told, it was for the girls' own good because local people would see them in a certain way. The students, after all, were 'outsiders', which we all know is an edgy term nowadays.

How easy it is to talk about other people's practices as evidence of backward tradition or dismiss a woman in salwar kameez as behenji type, but what about these so-called modern traditions? These codes are considered neutral, but in fact, like all codes, hold unspoken meanings. Conformity gets sewn into this cloth, and makes difference a matter of irregularity, impropriety and suspicion. Are we then surprised to hear of workplace discrimination: of gender, class or caste? These little ways reveal how, the idea of diversity can so easily become tokenistic, an outer dress, rather than an expansive embrace of inclusion from within.

Paromita Vohra is an award-winning Mumbai-based filmmaker, writer and curator working with fiction and non-fiction. Reach her at www.parodevipictures.com

Catch up on all the latest Crime, National, International and Hatke news here. Also download the new mid-day Android and iOS apps to get latest updates