[dropcap]A[/dropcap]reporter for this newspaper was prevented from entering the chamber during a recent House session. So far as we can tell, she has never been named a media terrorist. She featured no large body parts that might scream bomb in certain minds. Keryn Nelson is very much on the slim side, and not at all menacing. But for the cop at the door she represented cause for pause, mainly on account of her jeans. “You have to look like a dane,” he advised Keryn. Presumably he meant to say “like a dame,” doubtless with the image of our former governor general in mind. The cop’s female colleague—who was dressed like a man in trousers and shortsleeves—was less concerned about Keryn’s outfit. But she worried what the Speaker might say. To be safe, she left the reporter with her fellow officer while she sought guidance from someone more informed. At which point the male cop further cautioned the 26-year-old: “When you come to the House you should dress more ladylike.”
Before I sat down to write this dispatch, I checked the definition of ladylike. This is how my first dictionary defines the word: “Behavior that seems appropriate for a polite, civilized girl or woman is sometimes called ladylike.” Another definition: “The adjective ladylike is an old-fashioned way to describe how a dignified or proper woman acts.” (I plan later to investigate what separates ordinary women from those considered “dignified” and “proper.” I suspect it has less to do with conduct than with location, location, location—not to say who’s looking!)
My prized OED offers the following defintion: “Ladylike involves having the distinctive manner and appearance of a lady. It implies refinement and abiding by socially acceptable modes of feminine behavior, including, by implication, sexual behavior.”
I wondered for a moment or two how the way Keryn was dressed on the recalled occasion might’ve implied prohibitive behavior not normally associated with our House cads. Then again, I’ve lived long enough, and seen enough, to know the way females are perceived (objectified?) has little to do with their garments and almost everything to do with a beholder’s imagination. A woman covered from neck to toe in layers of opaque fabric can have on certain individuals the same effect a woman dressed for a night of fishing at Mercury Beach might have on others.
It occurred to me that one of the House cops had determined the content of Keryn’s character by the color and cut of her clothes that left uncovered only her hands and face. Inquiries at the Speaker’s Chambers indicated there was indeed a House dress code. It was not readily available from the House’s morality police but with a little effort I was soon perusing the sought after document. A kind soul had emailed it to me. It turned out not to be a dress code per se. It identified itself as “Stranger’s Code of Conduct during a Sitting of the Parliamentary.” What followed this declaration is enlightening, on more than one count. It set right those among us who truly believe ourselves shareholders in the business of government, albeit operated by individuals accountable to we the people. The very first paragraph of the “Stranger’s Code of Conduct” underscores that we are not all created equal: “Admission to the public galleries during any sitting is a privilege extended by parliament, and strangers attending must conform to established forms of behavior and dress.”
So much for the claim that parliament is “our House.” How can it be, when the hired help—representatives-caretakers—consider us “strangers”—defined as “persons whom one does not know or with whom one is not familiar . . . persons who do not know, or are not known in, a particular place or community . . . persons who do not belong to or are kept from the activities of a group.” As for the clothes to be worn by those who would enjoy the extended “privilege,” the Code demands they not only dress according to “established forms” but that they also “must at all times be dressed tidily.” Established forms? Tidily?
Evidently it is up to the cops at parliament’s door to determine whether strangers and our lawmakers share the same idea of sartorial elegance. All the same, in the mid-70s, lawmakers and seated privileged strangers alike were taken off guard when, in the middle of an MP’s contribution to a heated debate, the normally soft-spoken if acerbic House Speaker bellowed at the sergeant-at-arms, right forefinger pointed at the public entrance to the House chamber: “Stop that man!”
That man turned out to be none other than the day’s premier political drama queen George Odlum at the height of his fame, and answerable to no man. The cops at the front door had meekly permitted him to enter the public gallery in full costume—U.S. Army greens, black boots, cloth cap in hand—as if indeed he was a law unto himself and by several cuts above the day’s widely scorned Rastas who wouldn’t dream of polluting the sanctity of the House with their untidy dreadlocks. Poor Brother George never got even the opportunity to bow to the chair before he was led out like a shorn blackface wether by the very cops that seconds earlier had welcomed him. Only a few months later, in 1997, Mr. Wilfred St. Clair Daniel—a casualty of the year’s general election and no longer House Speaker—was among a group of fawning born-again at a posh New York bistro several yards from the U.N. headquarters in New York waxing dithyrambic about Saint Lucia’s new foreign affairs minister, the honorable George Odlum. Oh, but back to our reporter and her interrupted maiden venture into our masters’ chamber.
The cops at the door never mentioned the key words—“established forms of behavior and dress.” Neither “tidily.” What arrested their attention were Keryn’s not lady-like jeans. As if to further confuse, the verboten items mentioned in the Code are: armhole tee shirts, slippers, short pants, displayed signs and banners, apparel with obscene prints and track pants. Male strangers are required to “remove their hats upon entering the chamber.” The Code mentions none of the items worn by Keryn. Neither, for that matter, the U.S. Army fatigues that in 1996 had gotten George Odlum ejected.
I am informed that the items of clothing not permitted in the House are also disallowed at our public buildings. I should add that to the best of my knowledge no male has been denied entry to the public gallery because he was attired in jeans and shirt. Meanwhile, women en-route to appointments with government ministers are routinely turned away because their clothing, for whatever reasons, “showed too much.” One is left to wonder whether the stiff rules were laid down by male lawmakers for the protection of women against out of control horny male officials. But then it should by now be common knowledge that what a woman wears never was the cause of unwanted libidinous attention. That cause has always resided in her attacker!
