A recent news article caught my attention (http://shine.yahoo.com/parenting/utah-teen-kicked-class-because-her-hair-color-192700681.html). To summarize, a teenage girl from Utah was suspended from school...for dyeing her hair...red.
Really?! Seriously?!
Apparently this violates the school's dress code requiring students to have "natural" hair colors. The girl initially refused to change her hair color, with the full support of her mom, according to the article, who was quoted as saying that her daughter's hair color change from mousy brown to auburn red had boosted her confidence, making her feel pretty. But after missing a few days of classes due to this apparent code violation, the teen gave in to the pressure and washed her hair enough times to fade the color, making it acceptable for her school's standards. Ugh.
This article bothered me for a few different reasons. First of all, it hit close to home.
As an angsty teenager struggling to find and express my fragile identity, I dyed my hair jet black at 16 and continued dyeing it for the remainder of my high school days. Although my hometown high school was (and is) extremely small and rural, this was not a problem. (Hats were banned, but hair dye, thankfully, was not.)
But if it had been? I would have been devastated if I'd been forced to change back to my own mousy brown natural color. The black hair, admittedly in hindsight, was not my greatest fashion statement, but it was a statement, nonetheless. It became part of who I was. And for a shy teenager, having the freedom to change my appearance the way I wanted (at a time when I had so little freedom to change anything about my life) meant everything. It gave me more confidence. Before dyeing my hair, I had been mostly invisible and ignored for the previous two years at my new high school. After, I got attention (some of it negative, of course) and friends.
Dyeing my hair, strange as it might sound, changed my life. I think it has changed a lot of women's lives.
Over 10 years later, I still dye my hair. The garish black is long gone, a faded memory, replaced by a dark red (similar to the girl's color in the article) that fades to a natural-looking reddish brown after several weeks. Fortunately, I still have the freedom to wear my hair as I wish. (My employer has no law against this, and I wouldn't violate it if there was.)
The violation of freedom of expression truly troubles me, though. I posted this article on my Facebook page and received not one comment of outrage over this school's policy (not even a WTH? or WTF?), which causes me to wonder if anyone else is concerned about a threat to this freedom.
Do we care only if it affects us or someone we personally know? My Facebook news feed is clogged daily with pro-gun and anti-gun posts to the point that I'm considering blocking certain "friends" from my news feed. It's an important issue, I agree, but not the most important to me.
I wholeheartedly believe that schools need dress codes, especially for students who show too much skin or wear clothes with offensive messages.
But we can't allow students to lose their freedom of expression. What other freedom do teenagers have?
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