WHAT’S “BAE”?
For those not up on urban lingo, it’s a way of calling someone baby or babe, a shorter way of saying Before Anyone Else. It can apply to boyfriend or girlfriend. As a word, it’s been around for ages — Time magazine reports that it was a word for sheep sounds in the 1500s. But it got popularized in Pharrell’s 2014 song, “Come Get It Bae.” Last week, it took off on Twitter with the hashtag #teacherbae.
According to a 2012 blog post from the Association of American Educators, 56 percent of public schools enforce a dress code for students, but don't have similar guidelines for teachers. The rule for what's inappropriate for educators to wear is more like Supreme Court Justice Stewart's famous view on pornography - they know it when they see it.
And in the case of Atlanta fourth-grade teaching assistant Patrice Brown, now known (regrettably) as #teacherbae, a lot of people on social media think they know that they've seen something inappropriate. Others, not so much.
“Definitely inappropriate if you’re a teacher,” one Twitter user wrote of photos the young, curvy Brown posted on her own, now private Instagram of herself, in her classroom, in covered-up but fairly body-conscious and form-fitting outfits including dresses and jeans. Another wrote, “Still not sure how a knee-length dress with a high collar is inappropriate. Let her be.”
Like most stories that go viral and inspire think pieces like the very one you are reading, the hubbub about Brown’s clothing, and then the hubbub about the hubbub, touches on a lot of hot button topics - sexism, racism and double-standards in society in general and in the workplace specifically, generational differences in what’s appropriate to wear and to post on social media, body-shaming and just general fuddy-duddiness.
The paraprofessional teacher, who was recently named “Educator of The Month” at her school, appears to be a dedicated young woman who also posted photos of herself, in glasses, helping students with their work and looking fairly studious. And there doesn’t appear to have been any official discussion of Brown’s outfit until Atlanta Public Schools released a statement confirming her employment and said that she has been “given guidance regarding the APS Employee Dress Code, the use of social media, and Georgia Code of Ethics for educators, and she has been cooperative in addressing her presence on social media.”
So what is this? An attack of nosy virtual villagers bearing jealous Tweets instead of flaming pitchforks? A breakdown in standards? Further evidence of the sexualization of women, particularly those of color and/or with curvier bodies? (I’ve been busty and hippy all my life, even when I was younger and skinnier, and have tried on outfits that looked innocent and adorable on my more flat-chested friends and come out looking like Undercover Cop Hooker Barbie on me.)
So I opened up a discussion on my Facebook page, creating a passionate debate between both teachers and parents. Interestingly, some of the teachers felt that, fair or not, Brown’s outfits were better left for a dinner date - “I’m sorry, but you do have to be careful in your appearance in a school setting. It is simply part of your responsibility as an educator,” one wrote, while one of my former high school teachers wrote simply, “She’s lovely and should be left alone about this crap.”
My favorite was from a friend who works in a large urban school district in the north, who wrote that she’d “be THRILLED if every teacher in the district dressed like this young woman. She is covered and professional in all her pics. She’s not wearing a crop top with a see through skirt with a thong, which (I have) seen.”
Yikes! There wasn’t any more of a consensus among the parents on my page. One, from the Florida Panhandle, wrote “I think she looks great. I wouldn’t think twice about what she’s wearing if she were my kids’ teacher,” while a mother in Delray Beach wrote that her 7-year-old child is “VERY influenced by her teachers - how they talk, how they walk, and how they dress. I wouldn’t want her to dress in tight clothes & high heels, therefore I wouldn’t want her teacher to, either.”
How do I feel about it? Like my relationship with cheese, it’s complicated.
I absolutely believe that there is a double-standard at work regarding what's appropriate for men and women, particularly young attractive ones. I read a post from Everyday Feminism, that confirms that what's proper in the workplace is dictated still by the governing class in business, which is still white men. But teaching, at least K-12, is traditionally a female-dominated profession, so if a female teacher is reprimanded for her attire, what's happening?
Also, I absolutely agree that Brown’s general attractiveness, and her specific curviness, make her susceptible to those who see her curves, and perhaps even her brown skin, and instantly start singing Van Halen’s “Hot For Teacher” under their breath, negating her obvious hard work and dedication.
I think she’s adorable. Then again, I have to admit that being adorable isn’t her primary job as a teacher, and that sometimes you have to accept that stuff that looks cute in another context isn’t always professional. It’s not fair. But it is what it is.
So I asked Donalda A. McCarthy, a teacher at Jupiter Middle School of Technology, what she thought. And she feels for Brown, and thinks it’s maybe not fair that she’s held to a different standard as a woman, particularly as a young, pretty one. But she still thinks some of the outfits posted on Instagram are inappropriate.
“Would it be better if our society didn’t take those things into context?” McCarthy told me. “Yes. But it does. So you have the responsibility to dress as a professional.”
She also mentioned another interesting part of the #teacherbae debate, that Brown not only wore these outfits, appropriate or not, to work at a school, but that she posted them on a social media page that was, initially, public. Obviously she didn’t see anything wrong with either the wearing or the posting. A lot of professionals, including myself, self-police our Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts to make sure that even if we do stuff our employers might not like, there isn’t photographic evidence of it.
McCarthy thinks that Brown was raised "without a culture of privacy, the idea that people her age don't know what should and shouldn't be online." Interestingly enough, I heard almost that exact sentiment from a Nova Southeastern University professor in an interview for a story about Millennials, being raised in post-9/11 America.
So what do we take from this? Honestly, I don’t think even polite debate is going to change any minds. Young teachers who think form-fitting outfits are appropriate at work will continue to wear them, at least until their principals tell them otherwise. And a lot of people are probably just changing their privacy settings and living their lives.
Patrice Brown is a gorgeous and obviously dedicated young educator who will probably have to be more careful about what she wears to work, or at least where she posts photos of what she wears.
“It’s a shame, alas,” McCarthy says, “but this is the reality of the workplace.”
