uniform

When I look back, I’ve been always wearing some kind of ‘uniforms’ in my life. As many people know, many Japanese schools implement school uniforms. In elementary schools, I didn’t have uniform, but for PE, we were required to wear the same t-shirt and short pants. We had the same bags, and there were some criterions for shoes inside school too (we didn’t have to buy the same shoes, but shoes had to be white or something).

In junior high school and high school, I wore school uniforms so as PE clothes. The shoes inside the school was designated by school, which was color coordinated by grade (1^st grade—green, 2^nd grade—blue, and 3^rd grade—red etc).

Dussel states “[uniforms] identify their wearers as members of a group and locate them within hierarchy.” The uniforms contain implicit meanings within a society. For example, in my hometown, junior high school female students wear white high socks and high school students wear navy high socks. Both uniforms look similar, but people can tell which goes to junior high or high school. However, this rule is not applied in Tokyo. When I visited there, high school students also wore white high socks. Therefore, these hidden messages can differ from place to place.

It’s not enough to wear uniforms. I think students are expected to wear uniforms in certain way. For example, in my high school, students were not supposed to shorten their skirts. Boys need to tuck their shirt in the pants. The way you dress was also an expected social behavior, the schools instill social norms by letting students wear school uniforms in certain ways.

It was interesting to realize that school uniforms bring equity among students, but at the same time, they function to distinguish a group of people from the rest and put them in a hierarchy. Also, wearing uniforms carries the implications for moral regulations.