There’s lots of cross-dressing buzz in the mainstream media and in the blogosphere.  Here’s a semi-biased sample for your consideration:

Oct. 17: CNN covers Morehouse College’s dress code which “cracks down on cross-dressing.”

Nov. 6: NYT article asks “Can a Boy Wear a Skirt to School?” and describes U.S. high schools whose dress codes range from enforcing ‘traditional’ norms to allowing for students to more freely express their sex, gender and sexuality through their appearance. Is this a case of those with social/political power being ‘out of touch’ with changing times?

Dress code conflicts often reflect a generational divide, with students coming of age in a culture that is more accepting of ambiguity and difference than that of the adults who make the rules.

Nov. 7: Sociologist Shari Dworkin’s post on the Sexuality & Society blog adds a more nuanced analysis of Morehouse’s policy and encourages a complex approach to understanding gender-based dress codes.

Nov. 18: My guest-post on the Sexuality & Society blog takes on some of the questions left unasked and unanswered in that Nov. 6 NYT article about high school dress codes and considers Dworkin’s arguments.

What are the overt and covert goals of school dress codes? Are these dress codes developed to ensure that students meet norms of professionalism, or do these serve as tools for schools to enforce heteronormativity and stigmatize transgenderism? Are schools citing safety concerns, warning parents about how to protect youth from harm, or do these intend to distract us from the ways in which dress codes serve to reinforce heterosexist norms? How well can we predict the unintended consequences of dress codes – both the more ‘traditional’ and more ‘progressive’ policies?

Today: I read a new NYT article online — in the Fashion & Style section — that asserts, “It’s All a Blur to Them” and goes on to describe today’s “urban” 20-somethings who,

are revising standard notions of gender-appropriate dressing, tweaking codes, upending conventions and making hash of ancient norms.

So, what are we to think? In early November, we read about a female high-school senior who was forbidden to wear a tux in her yearbook photo. A couple of weeks later, we read about the growing trend of unisex lines in the fashion world. Does this mix of media coverage reflect that the U.S. remains an ideologically conflicted patchwork of ‘blue’ and ‘red’ Americans? Or, if the generational-change argument holds true, then are we on our way to becoming a society that truly embraces ‘gender fluidity’?