I attended two high school graduations last week and the sexism, ableism and classism contained in those ceremonies are still giving me indigestion a week later. Honestly, I could write a very long, very angry book about what I saw and heard, but for now, I'm going to stick with the most galling complaint--graduation gowns colored by the restrictive gender binary- maroon for males and white for females.

First and foremost, for students struggling with their gender identities or who are happy with their gender but don't fit into the traditional gender binary, this is an unnecessarily cruel way to torment them on what should be a happy day. I have multiple friends who are juniors dreading their future graduation for this very reason. Upholding traditions shouldn't come at a cost to people's identities.

Additionally, when I ordered my gown last year I was not asked if I wanted maroon or white. Presumably, the gentleman from the company eyeballed me as a femme-presenting person and assumed. For cisgender me, he chose correctly; for others maybe not.

Second, white for women? Virginal white for women? It's not even a school color at my town's high school. On a day when academic accomplishments are being celebrated and young graduates are being sent off into the world, dressing all the women in white insinuates that they are innocent beings needing protection and support. Color can be a powerful symbol, and when it's misused like this, it sends the subtle message that women should be set apart from men and put into a different category.

Color has visual impact so people will often read meaning into it. At graduation, the National Honor Society had white stoles for the men and blue for the girls. My mother was confused by the color difference, and assumed that there were two ranks or levels of NHS members signified by the colors. When I corrected her that the only difference was the gender of the people wearing them, she said that at first she thought the blue stoles signified a whole different organization completely. I'm sure in the crowd, she couldn't have been the only one to read unintentional meaning into the color difference of the stoles; perhaps someone in the crowd even thought that women couldn't be in NHS.

Also, due to color's visual impact, the graduating seniors all looked mismatched due to the color difference. It wasn't aesthetically appealing and made the ceremony appear less formal and chaotic. (While this is a lesser point, it reinforces the point of how unneeded the color coding is. It doesn't even look good y'all, so why does my high school, and countless others, still do it. Tradition is a lame excuse!)

Graduation gowns and stoles colored by gender are completely unnecessary due to the possibility for emotional distress for some, the inherent symbolic divide created by the color white in particular and lastly the unintentional aesthetic of disorder it creates.