Uniform mass-market dress lets young students deny that class differences exist

Evidence

Today’s students all dress alike, wearing clothes from stores such as the Gap and Benetton; this acts to erase the markers of class difference that older generations of students experienced. Young students are more eager to deny the impact of class and class differences in our society. I have found that students from upperand middle-class backgrounds are disturbed if heated exchange takes place in the classroom. Many of them equate loud talk or interruptions with rude and threatening behavior. Yet those of us from working-class backgrounds may feel that discussion is deeper and richer if it arouses intense responses. — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 372

Categorization

• SHARE: A 1994 observation that Gap/Benetton uniforms erased outward class markers — worth sharing with someone who tracks how mass retail dress encodes or hides social standing.
• ADDENDUM: Directly extends the dress/class-signaling theme of the immodesty article — clothing as a technology of class erasure versus class display.
• XREF: connects to: Classroom ideology presents education as a democratic space where all learners are equal — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as…, 350; Mass-produced clothing blurs class signals in urban dress; Uniform dress makes the act of ordering invisible behind its effects — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 278 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Mass-produced clothing blurs class signals in urban dress #expands (0.85)
• Official nonracialism is public dress that hides private difference #exemplifies (0.80)
• Uniform dress makes the act of ordering invisible behind its effects #expands (0.75) — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 278