As a teacher, my biggest concern before we took our annual class photo was my arms. The photographer had my students and me stand with our bodies positioned to our right and our heads facing the camera. I couldn’t get away with “sorority arms,” the akimbo posture that gives the optical illusion of being toned. No, the photographer seemed to insist that we embrace our “teacher arms,” the bodies’ low-hanging fruit that sway and jiggle any time we’re in front of a class. Most of my career is learning ways to conceal my teacher arms. In this instance, I tried to compensate by standing as straight as I could — chest out, head held high.
A week later, when I received the photo prints, my morning coffee resurfaced at the back of my throat: my midriff was showing. In a class picture with all my chipmunk-cheeked 10-year old students in their pristine collared shirts and pleated skirts, their teacher, Ms. MacDougall, was showing off her bellybutton.
And no, I wasn’t wearing some 90s revival crop top from Forever 21 (see: teacher muffintop). The day of the photo, I wore a chambray tank top from J Crew, a grown-up shirt from a grown up store. You knew the shirt was for grown ups because it sported two long pieces of fabric on the side that were designed to tie in a sweet little knot at the hip. These strands were important. The style practically screams, “My bedtime may be 9pm, but I am on Instragram and I know what’s trending.” The style is for women who are too conservative to try the side tie on their own, but are emboldened by the I’m-A-Little-Teapot obviousness of the two pieces of fabric. It’s fashion’s equivalent of Steve Buscemi’s line on 30 Rock (“How do you do, fellow kids?”). Listen, even I know that chambray is over. But it’s safe. The tank’s mullet at the hem functions as directions for the professionally directionless, the women who want to look cool despite the constraints of office culture.
The Department of Education reports that 80% of the teachers in elementary schools and middle schools are women. This means that 80% of teachers every day don’t know what to wear. If you’re a male teacher, I think that’s great for you, because somehow cargo shorts just won’t die. But you will never know the tribulations of the “work bra,” the neutral-toned, no-nonsense cup bra that you can wear under every white or light-colored shirt. Every woman in the professional workforce has a work bra. One time I accidentally wore a pink bra to work with a scoop neck t-shirt and my female coworker teased me for my “sexy bra straps.”
The elementary school where I work has a handbook with guidelines for professional attire, but the general message is to use your best judgment. I’ve learned that while the handbook unequivocally forbids jeans, somehow white jeans are exempt. If all your work bras are in the wash, you can get away with a Normal People Bra, so long as you’re wearing a camisole over it. Oh, and camisoles: they are a teacher’s best friend, next to White Out. You can avoid showing even so much as the outline of a bra with a good camisole. I could have worn a camisole underneath my tank top for the class photo, but like, can I live?
A lot of rules of professionalism for women are unspoken, as it turns out. For instance, ain’t nobody letting their armpit hair grow at an elementary school. Some would argue that such a flagrant display of post-pubescence would be a “distraction” for students. The worst thing you can do as a teacher, aside from saying “shit” out loud when you break the window blinds (oops), is intimate at your own sexuality. No bra lines, no bra straps, and certainly no armpit hair. But, if you want to present yourself as an attractive, wholesome person, there are rules. Spoiler alert: the rules are sexist.
First, let’s just all agree that men rule the professional world with their pressed khakis and super boring collared shirts with whales and alligators and other arbitrary sea creatures on them. These trends are just tradition, like how all women at the royal wedding wore UFOs on their heads. Because men run most companies, their rules for professionalism mandate that women fall under their (let’s face it, hetero) norms of attractiveness. Like, I don’t know why the “cold shoulder” shirts are so popular right now. Frankly they are the Ed Sheeran of office fashion: they seem to be everywhere despite their obvious hideousness. I’m pretty sure their genesis comes from some repressed CEO at Ann Taylor who didn’t think women were showing enough skin for his liking. He probably also has a stash of photos of women’s ankles in his bottom desk drawer.
Unfortunately, when the choir of male bosses announces professional rules for women, we just kind of internalize it and ignore all the ways it constrains us — sometimes literally. The CEO of Spanx, Sarah Blakely, is the perfect example of How to Internalize The Patriarchy. The founder of the modern stocking corset had just failed the LSAT when she invented her billion-dollar idea. I want to give her snaps for not letting her perceived failures stop her from being a boss lady, but I kind of wish, instead of letting her failure nudge her into a career based on body shame, that she had, I dunno, maybe just tried taking the LSAT again? Maybe directed her energy toward lifting women up in a different way, so-to-speak, instead of profiting off a sense of female inadequacy? Then again, I have female friends who never leave the house without wearing Spanx, and I’ve always wondered how many more promotions I would go for if I weren’t constantly aware of my pantylines showing.
When I became a teacher, I felt strangely excited about the prospect of only shopping at Loft. After working at restaurants, bars, and coffee shops for so long, I could finally wear a uniform that felt “grown up,” professional. The appeal quickly unraveled, much around the same time the hem of my chino pants did. I love my job more than anything, but often I feel like a fraud: sometimes a lesson doesn’t go well and I’m hard on myself, but also, I am really bad at blowdrying my hair, I hate camisoles, and I think ballet flats are universally uncomfortable. I’ve also come to despise Loft’s lace yokes, slingback liner socks, and “vintage style” tees. I try to remember who I was before I entered the professional world. I wore ripped jeans, cowboy boots, oversized shirts. Now, when I dress in the morning, I try to balance my taste with someone else’s, a nebulous female figure who gets it all right: she’s the kind of woman who never shows her bra straps, who shaves her armpits every other day without getting razorburn, and who somehow always has an extra tampon for her friend. She never gets coffee on her white jeans. She is prepared, reliable, and yes, conservatively dressed. Unlike me, she would feel a draft before letting someone photograph her with her midriff showing.
The class photo is being sent back. The school’s communications director said something about names being misspelled, but I’m sure my bellybutton was a contributing factor. Even if the photo company can’t Photoshop it out, perhaps it will be my silent little rebellion against adulthood, against professionalism, against an internalized patriarchy that tells women that they are not enough. Today, I will let my teacher arms flap like the beautiful flesh wings they are. And years from now, when I am tempted to buy my first pair of Spanx, I will instead remember my quiet resistance as a young professional, and how I got away with it.
