Schoolboy in a skirt: Pupil protests at rule forcing boys to wear trousers during hot weather

By Andrew Levy

From: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/

It's not necessarily a photo Chris Whitehead’s parents will be framing and keeping on the mantelpiece.

But they are certainly proud of him. The 12-year-old wore a skirt to school yesterday to protest against ‘discriminatory’ rules which ban boys from wearing shorts.

He says it is unfair that girls can change into skirts during the hot weather, while boys have to swelter in long trousers.

Taking a stand: Chris Whitehead, 12, who sits on the school's council with supporters at Impington Village College, near Cambridge

This, he says, affects their concentration and ability to learn.

The schoolboy is taking advantage of a ‘silly loophole’ in the uniform policy at Impington Village College, near Cambridge, that means boys can wear skirts as the school would be guilty of discrimination if it tried to stop them.

‘In the summer months, girl students are allowed to wear skirts but boys are not allowed to wear shorts,’ Chris explained yesterday before his protest.

Skirting around the issue: Chris, who is in Year 8, said he wearing long trousers in summer affects boys' ability to concentrate

‘It discriminates against boys. I will march in a skirt with other boys waving banners and making a lot of noise.

AND THE RULES ON UNIFORM ARE ...

Students at Impington Village College must obey the 'Look Smart' uniform policy at all times.

The policy states students must wear 'plain black tailored trousers or knee-length skirts without slits' but does not specify a gender.

This means shorts are banned by their omission.

The uniform policy also states skirts should be 'free moving not tight against the legs, and trousers should be neither tight nor baggy'.

Jeans, corduroys, cargos with pockets, drainpipes, leggings or capri pants are all banned.

Pupils can wear one pair of discreet stud earrings, no bangles or rings, necklaces must not visible and no more than one watch should be worn.

Discreet make-up is permitted but teachers have the power to instruct students to remove excessive make-up and nail polish.

Teachers also have the power to make students tie back hair for health and safety reasons.

Coats, scarves, gloves and hats can be worn to and from College but not in lessons or the library. Denim, sweatshirts or "hoodies" are not permitted.

Plain black sensible footwear must be worn with no logos, coloured flares, coloured stitching and no high heels or boots, or sandals.

Tights must be plain, opaque, black or flesh-coloured and socks worn with skirts must be plain in colour and ankle length.
Belts must be plain, narrow, black, and fitted through belt loops of trousers.

Pupils are also ordered to wear sky blue polo shirts or sweatshirts bearing the school's logo.

‘I will be wearing the skirt at school all day in protest at the uniform policy and addressing the assembly with the school council.’

The year 8 pupil, who lives in nearby Histon, added: ‘Wearing a skirt is just like wearing shorts with a gap in the middle. I don’t feel silly at all. I don’t embarrass easily.’

The 1,368-pupil school, which was classed as good in its last Ofsted inspection in 2006, imposed the ban two years ago after a consultation with parents and teachers. Its ‘Look Smart’ dress code states students must wear ‘plain black tailored trousers or knee-length skirts without slits’ – but does not specify gender.

This means that while shorts are prohibited because they are not mentioned, girls – and boys – are free to wear skirts as long as they are ‘free moving, not tight against the legs’.

Chris borrowed a skirt from his sister Joanna, 11, and was accompanied by 30 supporters waving placards saying, ‘Cool shorts, not hot pants’, ‘Shorts for the long-term’ and ‘What’s wrong with my legs?’

And he said he intends to continue wearing the outfit.

His mother, Liz, 50, a maths teacher, said: ‘I’m delighted that Chris is taking action on what he believes in – which the school actually encourages, so he is only doing what he is taught.’

And his father, Brian, 48, who owns a publishing company, added: ‘It’s a creative and imaginative idea. I was worried about him getting picked on but he just shrugged his shoulders.’ Headmaster Robert Campbell said: ‘Our uniform policy does not state girls’ and boys’ uniforms because we can’t be discriminatory, so Chris is perfectly within his rights to wear a skirt.

‘What he has done is raise the issue in an entirely legitimate way. I think it will be right to start thinking about uniform again in September.’

An Equality and Human Rights Commission spokesman said: ‘It’s not possible to say if different uniform policies for boys and girls is or is not lawful, as it’s not been tested in the courts.’ But schools ‘should be flexible when considering students’ needs’, he added.

Dress Codes - The Mustache Is Inching Its Way Back - NYTimes

Phil Bray/Focus Features

THE ‘MILK’ MUSTACHE James Franco’s ’70s ’stache, sexy but soulful, may persuade men it is worthy of revival. More Photos >

By DAVID COLMAN

IN case you have been in a hole the last few years, stylish men have cast aside razors for electric clippers and taken to styling their face and body hair — a k a “manscaping” — with a zeal not seen since Edward Scissorhands. The beard, that onetime symbol of rural cluelessness, has become a badge of urban hipsterdom. This has grown to include a spectrum of variations, from a week’s slackerly growth to a handsome Czar Nicholas II beard to a full-blown Rutherford B. Hayes thicket.

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Dress Codes | The Mustache

But its upstairs neighbor, the mustache, has had a bumpier ride. It, like the beard, enjoyed its most widespread popularity between 1850 and 1900; John Wilkes Booth, it must be conceded, had a beaut. But today, the mustache cannot shake its ties to the sexy-yet-buffoonish machismo of the mid-1970s, epitomized by Burt Reynolds, Sam Elliott and the Village People, ’stache sporters all.

Lately, though, there are signs that the mustache is at long last shaking off the most unsavory of those associations. Exhibit A is, of course, Brad Pitt, who grew one just before the filming of Quentin Tarantino’s new World War II film, “Inglourious Basterds,” and flaunted it for the paparazzi over the holidays. Emanuel Millar, the head of the film’s hair department, said he was surprised when Mr. Pitt showed up to shoot avec mustache and insisted on keeping it despite the fact that it was not true to the period. Exhibit B is, of course, the “Milk” Mustache — that is, the one worn by the scene-stealing James Franco, playing Sean Penn’s long-suffering and dreamy boyfriend in “Milk.” While Mr. Penn’s performance is the most talked-about aspect of the film, Mr. Franco’s mustache has elicited plenty of admiration on its own.

Exhibit C is Jason Giambi, the Yankees first baseman whose summer comeback coincided with his sprouting a particularly fine-looking mustache, prompting many to recall the 1972 World Series, when a handlebar-wearing Rollie Fingers and the Oakland A’s took on the clean-shaven Cincinnati Reds in “the Hairs vs. the Squares.”

Despite these fetching examples, the fate of the mustache is uncertain. Unlike the beard, it still carries plenty of baggage, skewing either too old-school gay (see “Milk”) or too old-school straight (see John R. Bolton).

No one knows that fact better than the men who have grown one. Douglas Friedman, 36, a photographer, has endured many a jab since he grew a “porn-star ’stache,” as the basic mustache is now widely known, on a whim 10 years ago. “I get a lot of good-natured ribbing, but it’s usually derogatory,” he said. Once he was asked for a photo of himself for the contributor’s page of a major fashion magazine, only to have it dropped without explanation. Later, he found out why: the magazine’s editor hates mustaches.

Other editors are only too happy to use the image and all it implies.

Dov Charney, 39, the often controversial chief executive of American Apparel, known for its provocative ads, grew a ’70s-style mustache in 2004.

“I had it for seven months — eight months max,” Mr. Charney said. But over the next three years, whenever newspapers, magazines or bloggers ran stories about him, even after a photographer had come to take a current picture, most ended up using an old, mustached picture.

“People were really attached to that image,” he said. “In both positive articles, where they wanted to portray me as this sex-positive playboy, as well as the ones where they wanted to demonize me.”

The problem is, the men who look good in a mustache are vastly outnumbered by those using it for comedic effect (See “Anchorman” and “Borat”). Jason Lee does an admirable job straddling the fence as the star of the television series “My Name Is Earl.” Though his mustache looks good on him, in a ’76 Camaro kind of way, it also reads as an albatross of sorts — a token of his character’s lowlife nature for which he is forever making amends. You have to wonder if his mustache will magically fall off on the last episode.

Even the pro-mustache Movember movement is a double-edged razor. Originating in Australia in 2004, Movember challenges men to grow mustaches for the month of November to raise money for men’s health charities; an estimated 200,000 men worldwide participated in 2008. It brings the mustache back every fall, only to kill it off a few weeks later.

James Austin, 37, a currency salesman with a United States bank in London, participated with 12 colleagues and, by the end of the month, was torn about shaving. “It actually suits a lot of people,” Mr. Austin said. “There’s one guy in particular who doesn’t have much of a top lip, so he looks better.”

There was little hope that his own would last, though. “My wife put the kibosh on that,” he said.

Brandon Roberts, 28, a hotel executive assistant in New York, grew a mustache after seeing the re-release of “Cruising” two years ago, only to realize that, happily, he was now the spitting image of his father in the 1970s. “I think it’s easier to pull off a beard,” he said. “Having a mustache takes a certain something. You have to have it and own it and pull it off.”

Others take that notion a step further, likening the mustache to women’s re-embrace of overtly sexual tokens like stilettos and push-up bras. In 2006, irked that the new popularity of the beard had left the mustache eating dust, Jay Della Valle, 28, persuaded nine 20-something men to grow mustaches and document the experience in a film, “The Glorius Mustache Challenge.” (It was released on DVD last year.) He now hosts mustache parties and events like Movember and the ’Stache Bash in St. Louis. Like some cross between Robert Bly and Elmer Gantry, he kicks these off with an evangelical ceremony, invoking the transfiguring masculine power of the mustache.

“You got to wear it with this attitude,” Mr. Della Valle said. “Your mustache is always there, saying, ‘Yeah, I have a mustache, so bring it on.’ If you have a sense of humility connected to your mustache, it doesn’t look as good as it should.”

But for all its reclaimed machismo, he added, “The bottom line is this: The best response to the question, ‘Why the mustache?’ is, because it’s fun.”

In other words, why should you grow a mustache? Because it’s not there.