Dress codes tend to focus more on women than their male counterparts. School dress codes often cite justifications that blame girls for “distracting” male students when, really, those rules are just another way to police women’s bodies and get away with it.
Workplaces also implement dress codes that unfairly target women, as an unnamed female employee in California recently discovered.
The company issued a policy banning workers from wearing underwire bras.
One woman who worked at the company questioned the policy in a letter she sent to the advice column Ask A Manager.
“My company just introduced a new company-wide policy that you cannot wear an underwire bra due to setting off an alarm on a metal detector in the entrance of the building,” she wrote.
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The worker wondered whether the company’s policy banning underwire bras was legal in California. The answer from the advice columnist noted that banning a certain type of bra was, in fact, not illegal.
According to the law firm Aiman-Smith and Marcy, “Businesses are always allowed to set their dress codes based on the needs of the business itself.”
“The California state court has made it clear that some gendered separation in dress code is acceptable, but only if the difference doesn’t put a greater burden of effort and time on one gender or the other,” the law firm stated.
Although it would appear that not allowing underwire bras does put a greater burden of effort on women, it apparently isn’t illegal.
Not allowing women to wear underwire bras is common practice in prisons across the U.S., a highly gendered rule that has been at the center of various lawsuits.
In 2019, multiple female attorneys working at a Missouri detention center weren’t allowed to see their clients because their bras set off the metal detectors.
The attorneys filed lawsuits against the Jackson County Detention Center. They stated that they were required to remove their underwire bras but weren’t allowed to send them through the metal detector, whereas male employees could take off their belts and send them through.
The Jackson County Legislature paid the attorneys $405,000 to settle the lawsuits.
The rules around bras in the workplace seem to be decided on a state-by-state basis, and the language surrounding gendered dress codes is quite possibly murky on purpose.
According to Susan Scafidi, who founded the Fashion Law Institute at the Fordham University School of Law, federal law “only requires that dress codes have gender parity with regard to burdens such as cost.”
This point might work in favor of the women who are no longer allowed to wear underwire bras to work. Bras are expensive, especially in larger sizes. Replacing a carefully curated collection of undergarments could be cost-prohibitive to many women.
While the company’s no-underwire policy might be legal, it certainly isn’t practical or fair, seeing as it solely targets what women are wearing and not men.
Alexandra Blogier is a writer on YourTango’s news and entertainment team. She covers social issues, pop culture and all things to do with the entertainment industry.
