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I agree Olivia! This dress code business has really gotten out of hand. I remember a story recently where children (and I mean really young kids) were all invited to a pool party. The boys were allowed to wear whatever they wanted, however the girls had to wear a t-shirt over their bathing suits, so they didn't distract the boys. I don't know what is worse, limiting a child's ability to express themselves, or sexualizing girls of such a young age. Both teach these young girls from a young age, that the way they dress has negative consequences, not just for how they are perceived, but how it affects others. It is said that over 90% of women have an "I HATE MY BODY" moment everyday. It's not surprising when we instill ideas like this in young, impressionable kids.

Quote from MoB on December 4, 2015, 23:32
I really appreciated the layered nature of the letter as a symbol in the novel--the way it was interpreted by Hester's community, the way it was transformed by Hester and then reinterpreted, and also the way it is interpreted and reinterpreted by posterity (the narrator of the novel and the reader as well) as a sort of symbol of history, something that seems to ultimately signify that the past does not have a coherent or static meaning. There is an obvious identification with Hester in the address of sexist issues, and this dress code thing definitely has a puritanical air to it, but there's no relevance to adultery for these students. It's as if they're using the A as a symbol for the rejection of other-projected significance? Which seems like kind of a wild thing to have a symbol for.

To be honest, I didn't even realize that they were using the "A" to stand for something else until reading this. Clearly it's not an issue of adultery. I like the idea of it as a symbolic rebellion against the judgement of others. At the same time, I can't commend it as a act of pure courage, because as a movement there must have been peer pressure for wearing the A. (Obviously it doesn't make it less of a rebellion to have people supporting you, but it's an interesting thing to consider.)

It reminds me of this children's picture book I used to love. It was called "You Are Special" by Max Lucado, and the gist of it was that in this society people gave each other stickers when they approved or disapproved of their actions/personality/way of speaking/etc. They'd give a black dot or a gold star. The main character, Punchinello, was really clumsy and not many people liked him, so he was covered in black dots. One day he meets this girl, Lucia, who doesn't have any stickers on her. He's shocked to see that someone tries to give her a gold star and it falls off. (He understands not having black dots, but can't understand why she wouldn't want the stars/how they don't stick to her.) The rest of the book is about him figuring out why the stickers don't matter to her and how she grounds herself and her self-worth in something else.

I know there's another Scarlet Letter related discussion on slut-shaming, but I was thinking of the opposite... The need to be considered sexually desirable to be socially acceptable. (I haven't seen the movie Easy A, but doesn't this come into it too?)

To me, part of the beauty of Hestor's scarlet A was that she took it and transformed it, not because she was simply a conformist or reactionary, but because she was who she was and the label put on her didn't change that. It was obviously a struggle, but it was more about her personal growth than proving anything to anyone else.