There’s a cynical streak in me that makes me want to shake my
head and roll my eyes at the new-and-improved Gilroy High School
dress code. But then I look at the way some of my 20-something
staff dress for work and wonder
”
didn’t your mamas teach you anything about appropriate
dress?
”
There’s a cynical streak in me that makes me want to shake my head and roll my eyes at the new-and-improved Gilroy High School dress code. But then I look at the way some of my 20-something staff dress for work and wonder “didn’t your mamas teach you anything about appropriate dress?”
Granted, I was no Cary Grant in high school. My dress usually comprised a pair of cowboy boots, jeans and a T-shirt. When I really wanted to dress up I’d wear a blue T-shirt. At the risk of really dating myself, the most contentious debate revolved around whether girls could wear pants. We thought that dress code was stupid (I still think it was stupid) and I’m sure GHS students find their mandate equally nonsensical.
The gang-related attire that is apparently popular among boys is a no-brainer. Schools shouldn’t allow celebration of thug mentality. The fact that young men are emulating a culture based on violence and early death is more than alarming; it’s sad. It also speaks volumes about the place in which these youthful minds reside. Playful adolescence? Hardly. When did it become popular to mimic drug-dealing, violent losers who are lucky if they reach 30? Why are our kids ready to chuck careers and long-term contributions to society in favor of easy money and an early grave? Is anybody at the high school asking these questions?
The girls are tougher. Inappropriate in their cases relates to body parts – something dodgey to talk about at best. OK, get the obvious body parts off the menu; we all know what those are, and there’s nothing more distracting to a teen-age male trying to concentrate on geometry when he’s got other curves on his mind.
Now we’re down to belly buttons. In a recent article in The Dispatch, school officials described belly buttons as “provocative.”
Perhaps I’m really putting my naïveté in the spotlight here, but how did belly buttons become body-part-non-gratis? “Sarah, your belly button is showing and we on the high school Body-Part Committee find that to be a distraction for Emilio. It’s a stark indication you were born, not hatched, and we mustn’t have such blatant reminders of human procreation on our campuses.”
But, ya know, so what? GHS is at least making an attempt to define something as fleeting as “appropriate.” I joke, but I would not want to tackle a job like that.
Young women should be dressing for business anyway, which is my objection to belly buttons (God my daughter is going to kill me when she reads this). They’re less a statement of “come hither Emilio” than they are of “I’m too lazy to pick out a cute school outfit.” Teens being teens, they don’t need incentives to begin the human courtship ritual. Emilio is going to be mindful of Sarah regardless of whether her belly button is on display. But what it will teach Sarah is that school is about getting down to work, and courtship is for later – if I had my druthers it would be 10 years later.
So kudos for GHS for tackling an impossible task, and maybe, just maybe, when one of these young women apply for that first job, they may just leave the tube top at home. In the real world, business is conducted with utmost focus and concentration, and a renegade belly button wouldn’t help that focus. Especially if it’s an outsy.
And speaking of bad business practices, I see Charter Communications is back in the news, this time with a new general manager and revitalized promises for better service and more choices. Is it just me or is that a huge déjà vu?
The problem with Charter (OK, one of the problems with Charter) is by the time it gets its act together, there won’t be anyone left in Gilroy without a satellite dish. I’m sure Edward Merrill is a fine GM and will do much to turn the troubled company around. But let’s face it, once you’ve made an investment in a technology as disruptive to cable as satellite is, it will take an act of God to make a consumer jump back to cable.
It’s not like brands of soup, where a customer can give one brand another chance next week. Every frustrated customer that opts for satellite (and I imagine they are growing exponentially) is one more customer removed permanently from a customer base for Charter. Once they switch you’ve lost the sale for good. Good luck Ed; you’ve got your work cut out for you.
