Before I embark into a fearsome and bellicose tirade against the evils of mandatory uniformity, it’s probably best that you, the audience, understand that I, the crazed screaming man verbally flailing his arms, do actually have fairly excellent credentials in this area. As a younger boy, I was enrolled in a private school, which required the usage of uniforms. To make matters worse – I was a young impressionistic Jew, whereas the school was more right wing, Christian-minded than Trent Lott after being mugged directly proceeding Christmas Mass by a black gay woman. In short – this isn’t just some random rant; this is a completely experienced rant.

Recently, I’ve heard quite a few of my peers supporting the ratification of mandatory uniforms within school dress codes, and if I weren’t so sure that the students in support of it had no idea what they were rallying for, I’d be more sick than the time I took the phrase “All You Can Eat” seriously at the Hometown Buffet.

One of the biggest supporting statements I’ve heard for this horrendous idea is the blatantly obvious truth that the usage of uniforms would make morning dress a swifter task. On average, (and yes, I did actually organize a series of timed tests specifically for this passage) it takes a male about three minutes to be dressed in the morning, and for a female, four. And by the term “dressed”, it means that the subject has opened up his or her drawer, looked inside, selected the garment of choice, and applied it to their person. Ladies and gentlemen, it takes an adolescent three and a half minutes to become suitably presentable for an entire day – remind me why it’s important that we cut down on this time? I mean, if you REALLY need that extra minute to make sure your Pop Tart is well done, seems like it’s YOU that should be paying for this by waking up earlier, not your peers by enforcing they all wear the same thing. Learn some responsibility if it’s that important to you – don’t push it on others. It’s not their fault that you’re a domestic window shopper with a love for crispy toaster pastries and greedy for an extra microsecond of time.

Another claim I’ve heard is that uniforms would be cheaper. Which, I cannot deny, is in most cases, true. But then again, in most cases, kids are carelessly flicking away enough money to pay off the national debt, correct the budget surplus, positively explode the stock market, and feed the starving children of Uzbekistan at Teen Angel for a single pair of fuzzy pants. Of course school uniforms will make wardrobe budgets less requiring! For the expenses of some of the things people are wearing nowadays, it’d be cheaper to wear the Taj Mahal on your left leg, and Buckingham Palace on your right! You don’t want to pay seventy dollars for shirts, fine! Shop at Wal-Mart! Again, stop being so selfish by taking advantage of your positions with the school board and imposing this horrible thing upon the very classmates that ELECTED YOU to REPRESENT THEM!

The American School System is already bad enough – we’re a nation that practices education through memorization. They hand us the date of Gettysburg, they tell us how many ions there are in a Sodium particle, they dumb down the plot of The Great Gatsby for us, and they show us a perfect circle… but when you ask the origin or even just a simple definition of one of these things in a student’s own words – we’re more dumbfounded than Madonna was when Evita didn’t score so much as a nomination for the Academy Awards. We already think enough in uniform – do we really need to LOOK uniform? That’s not the American way, folks. The United States of America is one of the greatest countries in the world because of the fact that we’re different people – each and every one of us. Every moment in American history, from Bacon’s rebellion all the way to me, standing right here before you, has been a proud and incredible statement that these United States THRIVE upon individuality. You want societal conformity and a uniform people? Well, the greatest example of that can be seen in old newsreels from the 1930’s and 40’s, although you might want to take a few foreign language classes, because otherwise, the German narration will be awfully hard for you to interpret. Hey, you want to look like mindless drones, do it along with those who actually want to. I, however, am an individual. I am independent from anyone else. I will not conform to a mandatory dress code, because you cannot tell me what to wear, just as I cannot tell you what to wear – and to confront me upon this issue, and demand that I submit, would be an small, yet nonetheless frontal assault upon the very spirit that makes our nation the beauty that it is. If I must serve Internal Suspension every day because of this, so be it. It will be a personal sacrifice I will gladly undertake. Yet as an elected representative of the PEOPLE, and being a person, myself, I feel it is my duty to speak out against this kowtow, selfish interposition. Essay: Uniform Theory 1

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