- By Molly Walsh -- Free Press Staff Writer

WINOOSKI -- Rachel Perras and Ljiljana Rakovic slink through the halls of Winooski High School wearing clingy tops, hip huggers and the confidence of teenagers who know they are in style.

And why not? Their form-fitting fashions are the unofficial uniform for teens and pre-teen girls across the country. There's just one problem. The school dress code wants them to cover up.

Because of the rules the two school chums have been asked to cover their midriffs, even, they say, when itsy-bitsy stretches of abdomen are exposed for nanoseconds.

Rakovic tells of the day she was innocently bending over to put her books in her locker and in the process bared a flash of contraband skin at her waist -- but not for long. "I got sent home," explained the 17-year-old. "I changed my shirt."

The injustice of the rules doesn't stop with school's ban on midriff tops, the teens say. What they find most unfair is the prohibition against spaghetti strap tops on school premises. For girls who have drawers full of the shoulder-baring shirts this edict is the equivalent of being denied a major food group.

"My biggest issue with the dress code is -- just allow spaghetti straps," pleaded 18-year-old Perras.

That's not likely to happen at Winooski High School, where Principal Brian Hoover faces a dilemma common to school administrators everywhere: How to enforce a G-rated school dress code in a world where R-rated fashions won't seem to go out of style.

Though some administrators say skimpy clothing on girls is a phenomenon year-round -- even in wind-whipped, wintry Vermont -- warm weather tends to bring out more skin in the schools. That means principals, assistant principals and teachers find themselves reluctantly cast as fashion police.

Many administrators say scantily clad girls and teens present the number one dress code violation. That is, girls and their exposed navels, love handles, cleavage, bra straps and other categories of garments and flesh that school administrators would rather not see on display in classes and cafeteria lines.

Student handbooks all over Chittenden County use similar verbiage to remind students that they are dressing for school and not the set of a Christina Aguilera music video. The rules vary somewhat, but there are common themes. No exposed undergarments, no see-through materials, and no! no! no! to cropped tops and short shorts. These rules, administrators say, aren't easy to enforce in a culture where pop stars, actresses and all the stores at the mall seem to popularize clothing that looks as if it's been shot apart by heat-seeking missiles.

Armando Vilaseca, principal of Essex High School, has a stash of T-shirts he hands out to students who need to cover up. Calls to parents sometimes reveal that the student has shed layers between home and the school entrance.

"I've called parents and I've said 'I'm sending your daughter home or giving her clothes because she has a fairly provocative outfit on,'" said Vilaseca. "And they say, 'She left this morning with a big, baggy sweatshirt on.'"

Vilaseca reminds students that certain clothing isn't right for school or work settings. He also tells them dressing appropriately helps make a good impression.

"People make an impression of you based on how you are dressed," he said. "That's the reality."

At Champlain Valley Union High School in Hinesburg, Principal Val Gardner enlisted the student council last year to resolve an escalating problem: bare midriffs. They're not allowed under the rules of the student handbook.

"The guidelines basically say you've got to be covered -- the tops and bottoms need to meet," Gardner said.

Engaging students in the dialogue was helpful, she said, but it didn't bring all the tops and bottoms together. Gardner still has to enforce the rules and occasionally faces criticism of the "don't be such a prude" variety from dress code scofflaws.

"Even in the dead of winter you have to do it," she said, "because it's a style. If one looks at what's being sold to kids, especially young women, it's the style now, the low-slung pants and the midriff being shown."

Of course there are plenty of students who don't need rules to tell them not to bare their belly buttons. Elizabeth Thibault, a 16-year-old at Winooski High School, doesn't like skimpy fashions.

Granted, Thibault is not immune from style and likes to cultivate an image -- as evident in the black Ramones sweatshirt, jeans, pink sneakers, pink braces, pink lipstick and generous application of eye makeup she wore to school one day last week. But she's not a fan of midriff tops.

"I don't like wearing stuff like that," she said. Nor is she seduced by the images of celebrities and singers strutting around in tiny clothes. "I don't like how artists have to sell their bodies to sell their records," Thibault said.

She thinks the dress code is a good thing for the school. "It's supposed to be a place of learning, not a place of showing off your body."

Other students agree, sort of. April Arnold, a Winooski High School senior, is critical of students who dress in revealing outfits, or as she put it -- "like a hootchie." With the warm weather arriving, Arnold wouldn't mind if the school's prohibition on spaghetti strap tops graduated early and never returned.

"As long as there's no cleavage I think it's all right," Arnold said.

Others complain that the dress code is not fairly enforced and that there is profiling, if you will, of female midriffs. "It seems like the guys get away with a lot more," said Perras.

Along with hip huggers, she was wearing a tank top with a colored bra strap showing on each shoulder, a small gold nose stud, a navel ring, and around her neck two reminders of her Catholic faith, one medallion for St. Christopher and another for the Virgin Mary.

The clothes were snug, but in her eyes no more suggestive than a male student in a muscle shirt. "If that's not a distraction or considered provocative, I don't see why tight hip huggers would be," she said.

Hoover and other administrators say it's not easy to keep up with dress code no-no's at school. "It's hard to enforce but we do it as much as we can," Hoover said. "We want an educational environment that is conducive to learning."

Furthermore, Winooski's rules do apply to boys. For example, the school asks students not to wear head attire in the building. As a result boys are sometimes asked to remove baseball caps or "do-rags" -- the Puff Daddy meets "Lawrence of Arabia" look in which a swath of fabric is stretched over the hair and secured in back.

The rule on headwear at Winooski reflects etiquette rules that say wearing hats inside is impolite, Hoover said.

He also spends a far amount of time asking boys to hoist up their pants and cover their underwear.

D.J. Desautels, a junior at Winooski High, was wearing his jeans last week around his waist -- but he likes the saggy pants look and occasionally has to be reminded by teachers to pull up his jeans.

"I just do it because it's comfortable," he said of the look. "It's not really that big a deal to me. Where my pants land is where they are staying."

He's not keen on the school rules governing attire and said he doesn't find the outfits girls wear at school to be distracting, with a few exceptions. Some of the exposed midriffs that sneak past the rules are just too much -- literally, from his perspective. "They're big girls and their stomachs hang out. That's very disturbing. I don't like to see that. It's just disturbing to me."

Contact Molly Walsh at 660-1874 or mwalsh@bfp.burlingtonfreepress.com

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