My high school had a uniform that we had to wear every day....EXCEPT for on Rosh Chodesh.
In theory, we could wear whatever we wanted, provided that it was tznuis (defined here as covering your collarbone, knees, and elbows) and not denim. In practice, that's not how it worked.
I remember my first Rosh Chodesh at this school. I was coming in from public school and had no idea what to expect. I walked in wearing a black skirt, a bright green casual shirt and sneakers. Everyone else walked in wearing cardigans, pencil skirts or A-line skirts, and wore non-black flats with tights. I looked like a hitch-hiker who had wandered into the Young Secretaries of America convention. Despite the rules against zip up sweatshirts, I promptly put on my black zip up sweatshirt to neutralize the impact of my shirt and tried to stay out of sight for the rest of the day.
Thankfully, it was a one-day Rosh Chodesh. That gave me a whole month to figure out what to wear.
I looked my wardrobe over. One pair of flats for shabbos, one pair for school. Two non-denim skirts that I never wore because they were ugly and I'd only gotten them because my mom made me. Only black cardigans, because my uniform required them. Lots and lots of denim skirts, sneakers, and T-shirts. Clearly, I had missed something. I had thought that business-casual wardrobes began after age 14, but I was wrong.
I don't really like shopping, so I pulled out my calendar. There were about 5 more Rosh Chodeshes in the entire school year on which we actually had school- the others fell on weekends and vacations. I promptly decided that spending an entire Sunday or two to buy clothes I didn't like for about 7 days of the entire year didn't make sense. Technically, we were allowed to wear our uniforms on Rosh Chodesh- and I' d seen about 20 girls in the whole school wearing their uniforms that day and not get in trouble.
So I made a decision that I would join the ranks of the girls who would wear a uniform on Rosh Chodesh.
"How was Rosh Chodesh?" my mother asked. "Were your clothes ok?"
"They were a bit too casual," I informed her. "This whole ordeal is too stressful. I'm wearing my uniform next time."
This declaration gave my mom a mild heart attack. She called her friend who has a daughter 2 years my senior who also went to my high school, in order to see how much hand-wringing she had to do about this latest display on non-conformity.
My mom's friend, bless her heart, told my mother that she hated my school's Rosh Chodesh policy. "It's outrageous! I already spend the money for one uniform and then I find out that there's a second, hidden uniform I have to buy also? At least I only have one daughter. It's such a competition with these girls, such peer pressure. You should be happy that your daughter isn't interested in this craziness!"
After that phone conversation, my mom tried to get me to dress up for the next Rosh Chodesh, and that went about as well as the first one. Thankfully, my mom has a very busy job and was not around to enforce the Young Secretarying of For Real on my third Rosh Chodesh.
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I put on my uniform that next Rosh Chodesh, resolving to connect to the other girls in uniform. I imagined that they'd all be like me- people who thought this whole thing was silly and didn't want the pressure.
"Eyyyyyy," It was Sara, my "older sister." All freshmen had "older sisters," but Sara and I had actually become friends. "For Real. Looking good!"
"You're also in uniform!" I retorted.
"No kidding," Sara shuddered. "What with Mrs. Principal on my back about how I'm wearing eye makeup, even though I'm not, and her having seen me at 7-11 the other week, I figured that I should lie low."
Huh. I hadn't thought of it that way. The school was using this fashion show of non-uniformity as a way to rank their students' virtue and use what kids wore on Rosh Chodesh as a factor in the larger overall ranking of who was good and who wasn't? EWW. This only made me feel more secure that I had made the right decision.
Throughout the day I met various other girls in uniform. There was a magnetic attraction between us as I sought to see what they were about, and they in turn tried to size me up and see what kind of uniform-wearer I was.
A surprisingly large number of them felt like Sara, that they were already on some watch list and didn't want to make anything worse by wearing something too "out there". A few of them were the generally clueless types who had forgotten that it was Rosh Chodesh. An even smaller number of them, mostly juniors and seniors, complained that they had "nothing to wear" because everyone had already seen all of their Rosh Chodesh outfits. In short, I was the only coming from a place of philosophical opposition.
My place in the society of Rosh Chodesh uniform wearers solidified throughout the year as they saw that this was not going to be a one-time thing with me. My refusal to join the Young Secretaries of America contributed to my growing reputation as someone the school didn't know what to do with. Ninth grade ended.
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"We're going to try something a little different this Rosh Chodesh," Mrs. Principal informed us after davening in the dusty prison room shortly before the first school Rosh Chodesh of 11th grade. I jerked out of my stupor, glad that I hadn't escaped to the bathroom that morning.
"One problem we've noticed is that we teach girls about tznius and then they graduate and we feel that our words did not reach them. We feel that this is because we don't teach tznius in a practical way- you girls don't connect our lectures to your outside outfits. Therefore we came up with a wonderful idea- this Rosh Chodesh we will be launching our "I Want Feedback" campaign! If you want to participate, you take an "I Want Feedback" badge and pin it to your outfit and teachers will talk to you one-on-one about your outfit's good tznius points and bad tznius points. Dismissed!"
Most people sleepwalked to first period, totally fine with this invasion.
I was incensed. "Shaina! Did you HEAR HER?"
"At least she said "If you want to participate," Shaina observed.
"I SUPPOSE THAT PARTICIPATION IN THE YOUTH GROUPS IN OCEANIA WAS ALSO BASED ON WANTING TO PARTICIPATE," I snarled.
"What are you talking about?" Shaina didn't like reading.
I sighed. "This is not optional," I translated.
I had to do SOMETHING. Even some of the girls who usually swallowed what the school doled out without complaint were murmuring discontentedly about this campaign.
That Rosh Chodesh, there were badges bearing the legend "I.W.F." for "I Want Feedback."
I immediately grabbed a handful of them, determined to lower the number of possible participants in this abomination, took my scissor out of my pencil case, and headed to the bathroom. I wedged one of the blades between the 2 halves of a badge, and it popped open, exposing the paper.
I took out a black pen and scrawled "ood" after the "F." The badge now read "I.W.Food," or "I Want Food." Chuckling at my own brilliance, I proceeded to doctor all of the badges in my possession this way.
The next step, distributing my awesome badges, did not go as smoothly. Shaina laughed, but felt that she couldn't take the risk. She was attempting to get the school to not insult her because she was trying to go to seminary. Devora just glared at me, mad about some drama that had happened 3 months ago that she wrongly thought I was involved in. Menucha, immune to any form of punishment because her family was one of the big donors, cheerfully stuck a badge on. I managed to get 10-15 other people to wear badges with me.
"For Real, to the office," the overhead speakers blared early in the afternoon. I sighed. They'd found me out already. I clomped down.
"For Real, are you distributing these badges?" Mrs. Principal held up one of my "I. W. Food" badges.
"Yes," I said. I believe in accountability
"You can't wear them or distribute them or make them ever again," Mrs. Principal said sternly.
"Ok," I said evenly.
Mrs Principal stared at me, disturbed at my lack of fear. "Get back to class!"
I returned to World History.
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The "I.W.Food" badge saga spread throughout the school. My unofficial offices, the stairwell by the lunchroom, the bathrooms and the library were suddenly full of people who would have never spoken to me before.
Most of them wanted to talk about their feelings about the campaign. As I'd predicted, a lot of girls were uncomfortable, but felt that they had to participate. "Wear your uniform!" I gestured imperiously from atop the library table. "I do it every month, and look at me- I'm still alive and healthy! You can do it too! If we all do it, they will have to stop!"
Of course, they couldn't do it. They were afraid of being the only one in their friend groups to wear a uniform. They were afraid of the teachers and administration noticing. "You can do these things, For Real. I can't. You're the type that can get away it," was the constant refrain I'd hear.
"All it takes to be the type that can get away with it is to get up and DO IT a few times," I growled at the wimps. My chizuk didn't affect them, because they were wimps.
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I continued my crusade against the Rosh Chodesh tznius campaign as it morphed and mutated into more and more insidious forms. I noticed a slight increase in uniform wearers, and a sharp decrease in badge-wearers as time wore on.
I kept it up until November of my senior, when I graduated to the next level of rule-breaking and cliche rebellion. At that point, tznius campaigns were child's play and I was busy with more exciting, important things.
The whole thing left a sour taste in my mouth, and I'd say, 3.5 years after graduation, that the "I Want Feeedback" campaign did not have its desired effect on my schoolmates or myself.
