Tangled up in blue: new strands in hair wars

Still, "It took years to convince Mom to let me," says Julie, now 14. Years, and a humiliating "short and girly" haircut last November – a shearing that left her mom so sympathetic, she relented. Julie now colors her hair monthly – pink, red, orange, blue, and purple – with help from her dad and compliments from her 10th-grade boyfriend, Jeff. Her homeroom teacher takes photos of each new look.

The common caveat in school dress codes these days is a catchall prohibition on clothes and hair deemed "disruptive to education" – a standard leaving plenty of room for interpretation.

To Eric Carlson, principal of Gerisch Middle School in suburban Southgate, Mich., it's a line that 7th-grader Maria Alexander clearly crossed last October, when she came to school with the lower half of her blonde hair dyed "cartoon blue." Mr. Carlson suspended Maria until she could wash the dye out or cover her hair. Southgate parents supported the dress code, and two weeks later, Maria returned to school with her hair washed to a dull bluish tint.

Carlson staunchly defends his judgment that Maria's was "disruptive" hair. "When kids started to openly joke and laugh in the hall ... broke into the Smurf song for her ... and called her Marge Simpson ... that reached the threshold of disruption."

To such arguments, the ACLU's Willis responds, "You cannot allow hecklers to veto the First Amendment."

In the annals of teen fashion – full of tattoos, piercings, and spikes – a few dabs of dye may seem harmless. But to adults, "it symbolizes insubordination writ large," says Joanne Eicher, Regents professor in the department of design, housing, and apparel at the University of Minnesota at the Twin Cities. She recently received her niece's graduation picture – with a green and blue mohawk.

Before the long-haired flower children of the 1960s, she says, teens' stylistic experimentation usually came through clothes, as with thebeatniks' beret-and-turtleneck garb. Even pop-music stars tended to be conservatively coiffed.

But today, the hair controversy surpasses the stylistic, even broaching religious freedom. In September of 2000 in Louisiana's Lafayette Parish, a Rastafarian family new to the area sued the school district for preventing their eight children from enrolling: District policy outlawed long hair and head coverings, which are mandated in Rastafarianism. After five months, the school enrolled the children, but demanded their knit headwraps be in school colors, and reserved the right to search the kids' dreadlocks each day for weapons and contraband.

And in Ohio in 1997, a hair controversy led to a lawsuit for unlawful seizure over an incident in which a school principal chopped off sixth grader Morgan Woodson's popcorn braids.

"Would the founding fathers be allowed in school with powdered wigs?" asks David Frank, a Harvard University sociologist. "It's hard to believe that school administrators should not be mobilized around more education-centric issues."

But Carlson of Gerish Middle School insists the line between looks and lessons is unclear. "The state charges me with [being] 'in loco parentis,'" he says, "so if I'm everybody's daddy, I'm making a judgment call.... You don't have to shred the cocoon the minute they leave elementary school."

The controversy has only emboldened the blue-coiffed Jesse Doyle.

In honor of the last day of school this Friday, he plans to dye his hair in rainbow stripes. "It's like beating the system," he says. "I'll probably do it when I'm grown up, too."

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