Years ago being tatted up or having a facial piercing would make or break a person landing a job position. Now a days that is not the case. Tattoos and piercings have grown to become very popular with millennials and generation z. These are the people that are entering the workforce and beginning to run those companies. 

Body art is now being seen as a more natural part of personal expression Body modifications have become very popular among people, one reason because of the media. In an article by Huffinton post 86% of young professionals do not think that piercings and tattoos reduce the chance of getting a job, and they have extensive research to prove that. This does not mean that there is not a limit of how tattoos are really accepted in the workplace. Visible tattoos have been shown to have a heavier negative effect on the employment selection, driven by the higher workers, managers and such. However still the acceptance of body modifications has skyrocketed.

As a college preparatory school Cape Henry tries to maintain the idea that preparing us for college and the real world means acting and looking professional. One way they prepare us for the workplace is the dress code. In the dress code there are strict regulations on having colored hair (natural colors only), piercings (ears only), and tattoos (non-visible). But is this really preparing the students for the real world, when the real world has changed dramatically since the dress code was implemented. Mr. Horgan shared that he doesn’t have many strong opinions on this topic. “I don’t think that dying your hair purple or pink is professional. I’m not saying I would not hire them, but at the same time I would have to really make sure they would fit into our community.” He also shared that it would be misguided to think that the real world is a uniform place, because it isn’t. There are places that are more accepting with it than others, that is how it will always be. 

Many members of our community think that it should be allowed to have this freedom of expression because that is how the real world works. Everyone is different and has more freedom to express it in unique ways. Sam Stanton ‘20 stated that, “It is understandable that students want to express themselves through body modifications, but we still are a private school. There are rules we have to follow and the fact that we must follow the dress code for that is understandable.” Another student Phoebe Moore ‘21 shared that she, “would actually like to petition against the school to have colored hair and other things because that is almost like an oppression of expression.”

In the end our community will hopefully slowly adapt to the fact that professionalism has changed drastically in the real world. Students that feel that they want to make those changes can always petition the school and ask for those changes, because that is what you would do in the real world. You want a right to do something, fight for it, our community leaders doors are always open.