The Dress Code
Dress codes can crush dreams,
I saw it the first day of school when my friend walked in obviously pregnant.
She wants to hold her daughter as she walks across the stage,
She’s watching that dream slip away as she’s called into the office, for the fourth time this month.
“I can’t afford them.” She says “They’re too expensive.” She tries to explain
It’s why she’s not wearing maternity pants.
Instead she’s wearing yoga pants, jeggings, leggings, and tights
All carefully placed under dresses and long shirts
If she’s lucky she gets sent back to class angry and frustrated,
She tells us how this is all that will fit her anymore and asks if she has the right to feel pretty
She says that she can’t afford fifty dollar pants that’ll fit for a month, if she’s lucky.
Her daughter’s gonna need diapers and bottles
Clothes and a crib
She goes home time and time again
Not because she’s sick
But because she breaking the dress code.
We know how weary she is,
You can see it on her face when she walks into class
But she makes the effort and she always looks amazing.
Until an administrator walks in
Sees her slumped over her books half asleep
(Cause she didn’t get off work ‘til ten and the baby kept her awake, kicking all night)
They tap her on the shoulder and ask to speak with her in the hall
“Bring your bag.” They tell her and we know she won’t be coming back.
It doesn’t matter that she’s got good grades,
It doesn’t matter that she works late at a gas station so her baby has what she needs when she comes,
It doesn’t matter that all she wants is to walk across that stage holding her baby girl,
What matters is the dress code.