Welcome to Gaia! ::

Aena laughs, "Why do you need special clothes to assert your individuality or express yourself? What, you have nothing to offer that's unique or special about you when you're dressed the same as everyone else?"

"There are a lot of reasons for uniforms that have nothing to do with control-freaking out or attempting to crush freedom or self-expression. First of all, there is the one I mentioned before, it levels the playing field between the rich and the poor and forces people to judge each other by what's on the inside rather than what's on the outside. They remove a major source of peer pressure by eliminating the need to worry about fashion and style and brand names and so on, and also the need to dress like a slut or a zombie to look cool. It also makes it easier to spot people who don't belong - like outsiders walking into a school. They are also usually designed to make it more difficult to hide things like weapons. They also make it harder to get away with skipping school."

"If you need to dress differently to feel different, you're just hiding behind your clothes. I could wear my underwear on the outside of my pants when I go to work, or I could dress in red and white candy stripes from head to toe, but does that make me any more or less of a special person? And if I am dressed head to toe and candy stripes and I happen to find myself in a room full of people who happen to all be wearing candy stripes, am I suddenly a faceless drone in the crowd?"

"Pfft, I don't pick friends because of how they look or how they are dressed, and I have no sympathy for people that do. If uniforms make it harder to prejudge people, I'm all for it. Shy or no, if a person has a personality, they will attract friends, and if they are being judged by what they do, they will attract people who like them for who they are, not for who they look like. I've lived with uniforms all my life, through school and most of my career, and I can tell you that no one was 'broken down' by having to dress like everyone else. Quite the opposite, I've found most North Americans remarkably superficial - you show up at school and before you open your mouth you're pigeon-holed just by what you're wearing. Personally, I believe in judging people by what they do, not by how they look."

"Eh," Aena shrugs, "I don't need a big neon sign over someone flashing 'interesting person here' to get me to go talk to them if our paths cross. If no-one noticed this girl despite the fact that she's an interesting person, that's a flaw in the people, not the girl's outfit. What would happen if this same girl was not in uniform, but chose to dress plainly and conservatively, because that's how she felt comfortable? Wouldn't she still be ignored, despite her hidden qualities? Does she have to wear a big flashing sign to get noticed?"

"Let me turn it around for you - what if everyone wore uniforms? Then that girl would stand out no more or less than anyone else. Because everyone looks the same, you would have to seek out interesting people by their personalities, right? In that case, this interesting person would never have been undiscovered at all. Right from the start you would have been looking out for people's inner qualities, and she would have appeared on your radar. So the absence of uniforms is what made her hidden."

"Oh, I totally agree, cherie - I object to enforced conformity on a visceral level. I think where you and I differ is what we consider to be bucking the trend. You think wearing clothes that are outlandish or different in some way is expressing your uniqueness, but I disagree. See, I see the girls at this concert Sa and I went to a little while ago, all of them swear blind they're all expressing their individuality and uniqueness, all the while they all dress alike in the way their rock gods show them how to. I don't think that picking a 'look', be it goth, nerd, jock or whatever, then dressing the part is expressing uniqueness, I just think that's a different kind of uniform. Wanna be seen as artsy? Then you have to dress artsy style. Wanna be seen as sporty? Then you have to dress sporty style. It's uniforms all over again, but unlike a single uniform for all, now you have divisive cliques, each with their own distinctive uniforms like gang colours."

"You gotta remember too that I'm looking at all of this from the outside. I spent one year in a Canadian high school, and by that point I had alread finished high school and college already, and had served a two year tour with a military freelance unit (although, they weren't much for uniforms there really - we all wore the same uniform because they gave them to us, but they wouldn't have objected if we got our own). I grew up with uniforms then got to know what it was like without them."

"Age is just a number, cherie! Besides, this is special internet beer, non-fattening and non alcoholic. Drink all you want!"

"Bon soir, cherie, how are you tonight?"

"In a good mood," she says with a devilish grin, "I've just completed a bit of mischief that I'm quite proud of, and I've yet to spring it on the unsuspecting target. So I'm kinda at that stage where you know the climax is inevitable and just around the corner, but not quite there yet. It's a good place to be."

"Ah, when I say unsuspecting, I mean she doesn't suspect what it is. But I'm pretty sure she knows something is coming," Anna stops and thinks, "So for her, it's kinda like christmas, ne? ^_^"