In a skirt, pajamas or a suit: this is how high school students protest against the dress code

Students from several Uruguayan high schools are protesting this week without raising their voices or saying a word. Every day they attend their educational center dressed with a particular slogan: formal clothes Monday, skirt Tuesday, summer Wednesday, pajama Thursday and Halloween Friday. And although the slogan may vary depending on the institution -even if a student feels uncomfortable they can go with flip flops or with a T-shirt of the "opposite gender"-, the demand is one: "that each one dress as they want and that they not discriminate based on appearance.

This is not the first time that student unions have called for protests of this type. In September, during Diversity Month, there were institutions that encouraged "showing your legs": this is what happened in high school 71 and IAVA. Now, however, the movement reached more massiveness because it added some of the most populous high schools: Bauzá, Dámaso and Zorrilla.

It happened that “a girl came to class wearing a tank top and a teacher scolded her that she couldn't come to study that way; she would tell him, 'You can see everything!'”, narrated Romina (fictitious name), a student at the Dámaso high school who saw what happened and who, since then, has supported the union's slogan. “We are not proposing that each one go naked, which could affect the other; we simply want the freedom to dress as we want, as we are comfortable and not be deprived of the right to education because of clothing.”

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Three years ago, after a similar discussion, the then Secondary Education Council annulled the regulations requiring a dress code. In any case, each high school and with the participation of students, officials and the management team could set their own codes or leave it to free will. According to Mariano, spokesperson for the IAVA student union, "dress codes they are usually framed in a binary logic, as if the only possible gender identities were male or female”. What is sought with this demand is "to break with the binary and that the dress code stops oppressing students."

In the case of the Zorrilla high school, this code does not exist. That is why the students stated: "If the code does not exist, it cannot be demanded...much less discriminate." Tomás, for example, was born a woman and went through a transformation process. He admits that "sometimes", because he was dressed in a shirt with a girdle (used to compress the breasts), "they laughed" at him. Even some of his teachers.

At the beginning of the 20th century, and inspired by the idea of ​​José Pedro Varela that “we are all equal behind the uniform, the Uruguayan public school imposed the white tunic. In the middle of that same century the blue ribbon was added. However, the high school students interviewed questioned, "that is a falsehood: in the school there are still tunics that are buttoned from the back for girls and it is almost impossible to see a boy who is allowed to wear that model," says Tomás, from the Zorrilla. In this sense, Mariano, from IAVA, concludes: “The uniform, even if it is unique, ends up limiting your way of expressing yourself and being through clothing. It is being able to express oneself freely.”