Can a boy wear a skirt

By now, most high school dress codes have just about done away with the guesswork.
Girls: no midriff-baring blouses, stiletto heels,
miniskirts.
Boys: no sagging pants, muscle shirts. But do the math. "Rules" + "teenager" = "challenges."

If the skirt is an acceptable length, can a boy wear it? Can a girl attend her prom in a tuxedo?

In recent years, a growing number of teenagers have been dressing to articulate — or confound — gender identity and sexual orientation. Certainly they have been confounding school officials, whose responses have ranged from indifference to applause to bans.

Last week, a cross-dressing Houston senior was sent home because his wig violated the school's dress code rule that a boy's hair may not be "longer than the bottom of a regular shirt collar."

In October, officials at a high school in Cobb County, Georgia, sent home a boy who favored wigs, makeup and skinny jeans. In August, a Mississippi student's senior portrait was barred from her yearbook because she had posed in a tuxedo.

Other schools are more accepting of unconventional gender expression. In September, a freshman girl at Rincon High School in Tucson who identifies as male was nominated for homecoming prince. Last May, a gay male student at a Los Angeles high school was crowned prom queen.

Dress code conflicts often reflect a generational divide, with students coming of age in a culture that is more accepting of ambiguity and difference than that of the adults who make the rules.

"This generation is really challenging the gender norms we grew up with," said Diane Ehrensaft, an Oakland psychologist who writes about gender. "A lot of youths say they won't be bound by boys having to wear this or girls wearing that. For them, gender is a creative playing field." Adults, she added, "become the gender police through dress codes."

Dress is always code, particularly for teenagers eager to telegraph evolving identities. Each year, schools hope to quell disruption by prohibiting the latest styles that signify a gang affiliation, a sexual act or drug use. But when officials want to discipline a student whose wardrobe expresses sexual orientation or gender variance, they must consider antidiscrimination policies, mental health factors, community standards and classroom distractions.

And safety is a critical concern.  In February 2008, Lawrence King, an eighth-grader from Oxnard, California, who occasionally wore high-heeled boots and makeup, was shot to death in class by another student.

Although dress code disputes are largely anecdotal, popping up in the news when a lawsuit threat emerges, educators and psychologists say that more schools will have to address them in the near future. There are 4,118 gay-straight alliance clubs in high schools across the country, which raise awareness of such issues.

All this is too much for some educators, who say high school should not be a public stage to work out private identity issues. School, they say, is a rigorous academic and social training ground for the world of adults and employment.