IHS, just like nearly every other school in the world, has a dress code. If students are caught violating it, they may be taken out of class, asked to change, or sent home. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia also has a dress code, and the Saudis take it very seriously. In 2002, the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice—the Saudi religious police— locked 800 girls inside a burning school because they were improperly dressed, leading them to be trampled and burned to death. In examining these two systems of attire regulation, an American may be very quick to point out the vast differences between them, feeling a sense of disgust at how “barbaric” the Saudis are. Through the lens of cultural relativism, however, it becomes very clear that the systems are more similar than an American may like to believe, differing mainly in their rationale.
It seems that the IHS administrators, like their fundamentalist Islamic counterparts, decided on a system that is objectively sexist: while it is perfectly acceptable for boys here to swim or run shirtless, young girls caught showing their midriff are seen, at least by the adult admins, as improperly dressed and in need of changing. The Atlantic writes that “female-specific policies account for a disproportionate number of the attire rules included in school handbooks,” leading to “the implication that women should be hypercognizant about their physical identity and how the world responds to it.” The Huffington Post adds that such codes “perpetuate rape culture.” Likewise, Saudi women take the brunt of attire law and punishment, being forced to cover their entire bodies with an abaya, unlike men. This can be no surprise coming from a country where women aren’t allowed to go anywhere without a chaperone, let alone drive or vote.
The two government bodies also decided to choose body parts to fetishize that seem somewhat arbitrary. In Saudi Arabia, they find the hair and the face particularly arousing, though nothing gets a Saudi man’s mind wandering quite like a woman’s exposed arms or legs. At IHS, it is interesting to note that administrators seem to be particularly alarmed by a girl’s bra straps.
Just like the Saudis, rule-makers here in Ithaca have no problem viewing men for what they are: sex-crazed soon-to-be rapists that need to be protected from their own instincts. Men, of course, should not be offended that they are being accused of being sex-obsessed perverts who would be unable to concentrate on anything if women dared show their bra straps in public. A boy certainly couldn’t be blamed for staring at a girl’s buttocks, provided her shorts were shorter than the extent of her fingertips (any longer, and then the boy will be at fault for ogling). After all, making disgusting assumptions based on someone’s gender is only offensive if it’s not true for everyone of that gender.
What sets the Saudi and American systems apart is their rationale. For their part, the Saudis claim that their dress code comes from Sharia law. In other words, they exercise harsh punishment on women because they believe the literal word of God told them to. While it may be difficult for a Westerner to admit, this is actually the most logically solid reason to do anything, provided that you believe in God. It would be insanity to defy an all-powerful and all-knowing creator that explicitly wrote a set of laws to enable maximum prosperity for humanity. Relative to a being that is all-knowing, how could we possibly be so arrogant as to think our lowly interpretations of God’s law are meaningful? Now, you may see Sharia law as utter nonsense, but it is clear that if, as the Saudis overwhelmingly do (or, at least, their conservative government), you believe the Koran to be the word of God, their actions are justified.
On the other hand, IHS admins support their policies by claiming that improper dress is “distracting.” This notion, while completely socially acceptable and true, has never been supported by scientific consensus—Li Zhou of The Atlantic writes that “research on dress codes remains inconclusive regarding the correlation between their implementation with students’ academic outcomes,” and we are thus forced to throw out the notion of “distraction” on its face. Science is (supposedly) our standard for legitimacy in the U.S., and if we do not meet our own culture’s requirements for logical validity, maybe we shouldn’t start making rules on our baseless assumptions after all.
In this light, the severe punishments and beatings of the Saudis, while disturbing on an emotional level, are logically fitting. This may be very, very difficult to digest; that’s the problem with cultural relativism. We grow so accustomed to a Western style of thinking that we struggle to understand and perhaps appreciate the laws and practices of foreigners. But given that, even by Western standards of thinking, our dress code makes little sense, it’s about time that the administrators start writing less archaic policy.