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ONCE, WHEN he was riding a minibus in Jakarta, James Danandjaja overheard two female senior-high-school students chatting with each other. The conversation went more or less like this:
 

“I saw a gorgeous guy on a bus yesterday. He was sitting on the front. I thought I was falling in love.”
“Cool! Did you get to know him?”
“Nope. I ended up not liking him, anyway.”
“Huh? Why?”
“Well, when I stood up and took a good look at him, I saw that he was wearing the junior-high uniform. Too bad. He was just a little boy.”[1]


I laughed out loud upon reading the story. It turns out that school uniforms never merely have a functional aspect. There are invariably cultural or sometimes also political meanings behind the clothes. In Danandjaja’s story of the two high-school girls, it has to do with the sense of seniority. That was why the high-school girl in Danandjaja’s story chose to quench her feelings for the cute boy due to one reason only: the boy was wearing a pair of blue short pants—which meant that he was still in junior high, “just a little boy.” Had the girl met the boy sans uniforms, the girl would perhaps not be immediately put off and judge the guy as “a little boy.”

On a far more political and serious scale, it was also the problem with school uniform that befell the students at the STOVIA (School tot Opleiding van Indische Artsen)—a school of medical education established specially for the indigenous students during the colonial time. The Dutch-Indies colonial government obliged the indigenous students to wear their traditional clothes at school with the sole purpose of visually differentiating them from the Europeans.[2] They were strictly banned to wear European clothes, although the education they received equaled with that of the Europeans. The colonial government, however, considered the indigenous population as being lower in value compared to the Europeans, so much so that they were not allowed to “resemble” the Europeans. The word “resemble” here mainly has only a visual meaning, as in terms of the education, the STOVIA students had the exact same education as the European medical students. From this case, one can conclude how the clothes could significantly determine someone’s identity—in the case of the STOVIA students, the form of the clothes was considered even more important than their intellectual bearing and attitudes toward life.

In Indonesia, school uniforms almost invariably have cultural and sometimes even political significance pertaining to the matter of identity. The identity that the school uniform reflects might not be in keeping with the wishes of the government as the students’ regulator. Although the government might wish to homogenize the students visually by means of uniforms—often this has the noble purpose of eliminating the visual gap between the poor and rich students—it turns out that the Indonesian students have never really submitted to that wish.


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After Indonesia became liberated, school uniforms did not immediately receive the government’s attention. There had been so many problems, especially related to the political conditions and war, thus relegating educational matters to the back seat. Until some years after the independence, there had still been students who went to school with simple, ragged clothes. War and poverty made it impossible for the education to take place with an added emphasis on something as “inconsequential” as clothing.

My research shows me that, historically, the first national regulation about school uniforms is the Decree No. 052/C/Kep/D/82. This decree of the Ministry of Education and culture was released on March 17, 1982—to be especially applied to state schools—and obliged the elementary school students to wear white-red uniforms; junior high, white-blue; and senior high, white-grey. The regulation gave no room for female Moslem clothing, especially in relation to the hijab. The female Moslem clothing—consisting generally of the hijab, long-sleeve shirts, and a long skirt—was not allowed as a school uniform.[3]

There had thus been problems in several Indonesian high schools related to the ban of wearing the hijab. Such problems had even come up some years before the Decree No. 052/C/Kep/D/82 was enforced. In 1979, the manager of the Bandung School of Pedagogy intended to separate some hijab-wearing students from the others. The female students clearly opposed such a discriminatory act and tension ensued between the school and the students. The problem was only resolved when the Chairman of the Council of Indonesian Clerics of West Java, EZ Muttaqien, stepped in.

After the incident in Bandung in 1979, there were other incidents related to the wearing of the hijab at school. The enforcement of the 1982 regulation that gave no place for the hijab and the female Moslem clothing increased the number of hijab-banning incidents. According to Alwi Alatas, there had been 35 Indonesian high-schools—in Jakarta, Bandung, Cirebon, Jember, and Solo—which were embroiled in such cases. Aside from the problem of the unaccomodating government regulation, such banning was also due to the suspicion that hijab-wearing students might be members of some fundamentalist Islamic movement. In the 1980s, Islamic movements had been in the spotlight—and under the repression from the government—so much so that Islamic expressions in public spaces became suspects.

For years, the hijab ban remained in place; a number of cases, big and small, emerged, interspersed by protests and controversies. Such problems were only resolved in 1991 when the government enforced a new regulation about school uniforms, accommodating female Moslem clothes, i.e. the Decree No. 100/C/Kep/D/1991.

The hijab ruckus in Indonesian schools in 1979 – 1991 showed us how students could not be high-handedly controlled by the government, the manager of education. Students who wear hijab to school have their own set of values that are unlike that of the other students. It is this distinct set of values that they want to convey by means of the hijab. Here, the hijab or the female Moslem clothing that they wear serves as a clear statement about their identity.

What, then, were the values that had inspired these girls to wear the hijab at the time and turned them into such strong-willed girls? They were none other than the Islamic values that these girls had learned in the various praying forums and Islamic trainings that were all the rage at the time. One could say that in the eighties Islamic movements were on the rise, although one must say that it was a “silent rise”, because government’s response to these movements tended to be negative and harsh. The Islamic preaching movements in state universities, especially in Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB), were often dubbed the Tarbiyah Movement—influenced by the Ikhwanul Muslimin organization in Egypt, and the embryo of today’s Partai Keadilan Sejahtera (PKS, the Justice and Welfare Party). The Salman Mosque at the Bandung Institute of Technology housed Islamic studies influenced by the Tarbiyah Movement. Several female students who wore the hijab to school—and these were not only students in Bandung—were graduates of the LMD (Training for the Islamic Propagation Strivers) and the SII (Intensive Islamic Studies), held by Salman activists. In Jakarta, the wearing of the hijab among school students had been influenced by the PII, the Indonesian Moslem Students’ Association.

It was this Islamic proselytizing movement—which at the time emerged due to, among others, the influence of the Iran Revolution—which then inspired the female high-school students to practice Islam in a more comprehensive way by covering their bodies. In the theological realm, the use of Moslem clothes could be understood as the wish to follow God’s commands thoroughly. In the social and cultural realms, however, the use of Islamic clothes serves as the affirmation of one’s identity affected by religious values. In short, the “hijab movement” means “I wear the hijab, therefore I am Moslem.”

At this point, the affirmation of one’s identity as conveyed through the hijab or female Moslem clothes served as a resistance against the government’s wish to homogenize the students. The values that the government wished to instill through the uniform were challenged by the female students who offered a new set of values that at the time was felt highly revolutionary.


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After the government allowed Moslem clothing to become a part of the school uniform, the resistance status that this kind of clothes used to have was automatically lost. The Moslem clothes became an integral part of the government policy about school uniform and thus lost its “revolutionary status.” In the subsequent periods, it is possible that we will not find any resistance against school uniforms that has the same fervor as we have encountered in the hijab phenomenon. Whether we realize it or not, however, there is bound to be some sort of resistance from one time to another, so much so that ‘total homogenization’ will never come to be.

Such small-scale resistance efforts can be seen in the changing visual details of school uniforms—especially that of the senior high school students. To prove that such differences exist, I did a small research by observing a number of feature films that I considered as popular films in their respective era, and those that talk about senior-high school students in different periods. I specifically examined three films, i.e. (a) Gita Cinta dari SMA (High School Love Song, by Arizal, 1979), starred by Rano Karno and Yessi Gusman; (b) Tangkaplah Daku Kau Kujitak (Catch Me, I’ll Smack You; by Achiel Nasrun, 1986), from the Lupus series that had been published in the Hai teenage magazine and told of the exploits of a senior-high school student named Lupus, starred by Ryan Hidayat, Firdha Kustler, and Nurul Arifin; and (c) Ada Apa dengan Cinta? (What’s Up with Love?, by Rudi Sujarwo, 2002), starred by Nicholas Saputra and Dian Sastrowardoyo.

In the opening scene of Gita Cinta dari SMA, we can see Galih (Rano Karno) hurries in on his old-fashioned pushbike to school. A few moments later, we see how Ratna (Yessi Gusman) takes a fancy to Galih as he comes late into the class. It is during the opening scenes in the classroom that I notice the special characteristics in Galih’s and Ratna’s clothes, which are diametrically different from today’s high school uniforms.

Galih wears white, short-sleeved shirt that appears to be of a low-cut style because the length between the collar button and the next button is so large that a lot of Galih’s upper chest is revealed. I see that Galih’s male friends also wear such shirts, although there are also ones who wear long-sleeved shirts—still with the “low-cut” feature—keeping the sleeves rolled up. Meanwhile, Galih’s trousers are long, grey trousers that look quite close-fitting. Galih puts the edges of his shirt in the trousers but he does not use any belt. Ratna, on the other hand, wears a neat white shirt that is rather loose compared to today’s female clothes. Her grey skirt is quite long, reaching below her knees. Ratna puts the edges of her shirt into her skirt, but, like Galih, she does not wear any belt. Ratna’s socks are white and long, almost reaching her knees.

In Tangkaplah Daku Kau Kujitak, we meet Lupus (Ryan Hidayat), who sports a pompadour hairstyle, short-sleeved white shirt whose edges are put inside the long, grey trousers, with a belt. The way Lupus wears his shirt is still similar to the way Galih wears his—with the seemingly low-cut style. One of the characteristics that differentiate the high-school clothes in this film with the ones in Gita Cinta dari SMA and Ada Apa dengan Cinta? is the white, short-sleeved shirts whose sleeves, for some obscure reason, are still rolled up. Such a visual detail is interesting as we compare it with the details found in the film Catatan Si Boy (“Boy’s Note”—‘Boy’ being the name of the protagonist), which was also popular during the same era, but telling of the lives of university students. In Catatan Si Boy, we find young men wearing T-shirts or shirts with rolled sleeves. The rolling of the sleeves has the objective to prevent the sleeves from appearing baggy and make the shirt look close-fitting, hugging the arms, and perhaps make the wearer looks macho. Such a clothing style had been in vogue among the Indonesian youth in the eighties.

Meanwhile, in Ada Apa dengan Cinta?, we meet Rangga (Nicholas Saputra), who wears a rather tight white shirt whose edges are not inserted into the long, grey trousers. We also meet Cinta (Dian Sastrowardoyo) who wears a tight white shirt above a short, close-fitting skirt that remains above her knees, with long, white socks that almost reach her knees. Cinta puts the edges of her shirt into her skirt. As I observed the clothes worn by Cinta’s friends, however, I found out that some of the female students in the film do not insert the edges of their shirts into the skirts. We thus realize that the shirts that these students wear are truly tight, especially when compared with the shirt that Ratna wears in Gita Cinta dari SMA.


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The three films that I have observed all take place in Jakarta, one of the most advanced Indonesian cities when it comes to fashion. I therefore think it is probable that the visual details of the uniforms worn in these films have been influenced by the latest fashion trends. Big cities can indeed be considered as a fertile field in which seeds of resistance might grow to challenge the regulation about the standardized uniform—especially the fashion-inspired resistance.

A friend who went to school in Jakarta told me that around 1998 the use of face towel hung around the neck somehow became trendy among high-school students in the city. The face towel, which had the practical use of wiping off sweats and had been for a time identified with pedicab drivers, was actually a symbol of ‘trendiness’ among the students in the capital city. There was also a time when female students liked to wear bright-colored underwear to school. Naturally, their fine white shirts could not conceal the pink or orange bras. On the days when the female students had to wear white skirts, their bright-colored undies were vaguely visible. “That was a form of entertainment of sorts for the male students at the time,” my friend reminisced.

My friend told me that in his high-school years, the third-year students had greater latitude in defying the uniform-related regulation. They, for example, always escaped reprimands although they did not insert the edges of their shirts into their trousers or skirts. While the first year students would be rebuked whenever they looked rather sloppy, the senior students could freely modify their uniforms. This could happen probably due to two reasons: (a) the senior students had formed closer relationships with their teachers; or (b) the teachers were tired of telling off the senior students who would graduate soon anyway. In this case, the visual detail of the uniform signifies seniority: tidy uniforms means junior students, sloppy appearance conveys seniority.

Such a resistance, however, has not been limited to Jakarta or big cities. I went to school in Solo, a town that is often, rather exaggeratedly, dubbed “the city of culture”—only because it houses a palace that is eternally seen as a keeper of “the noble Javanese tradition”. The students in Solo are actually not so different from their peers in Jakarta in how they treat school uniforms. The resistance against the standardization of uniforms appears all the time, in each generation.

As for myself, who spent my high-school years after the “boom” that was Ada Apa dengan Cinta?, I noticed how Cinta’s style of clothing was often imitated by my female friends. Rest assured, my “trendy” female friends would use tight shirts, body-hugging and short skirts, long socks almost reaching to their knees, and sometimes with the addition of expensive shoes. As far as I can remember, however, the trend gradually changed. The short, close-fitting skirts were steadily replaced by long skirts, but these latter skirts remained figure-hugging, thus revealing the wearers’ female curves.

Meanwhile, the hip fashion among my male friends consisted of a rather body-hugging shirt combined with bell-bottoms. Interestingly, the bell-bottoms trend has now been reversed with the emergence of the latest trend of tube-leg jeans à la the Punk boys. I have observed how that style is often imposed upon today’s high-school trousers.

The trend of using bright-colored underwear was not the monopoly of Jakarta, either. I have encountered such tendency since my junior-high school years in Solo. During that time, I often met students who deliberately challenged the regulation about their school uniforms. On Saturdays, for example, the students in my junior-high school were obliged to wear the all-brown uniforms of the Scouts. Although the students were clearly aware of this regulation, every Saturday there was bound to be a student who defied the rule by modifying his or her uniform.

One student, for example, would wear the brown shirt of the Scouts over the blue short-pants of the general junior-high uniforms. Visually, they were a true eyesore. There was no aesthetic element in this kind of resistance, nor was there any sense of fashion. I think—as someone who had committed such an act of defiance myself—there was no fixed reason behind such resistance. I, for one, sometimes used the Scouts’ brown shirts over my blue short-pants on Saturday for the simple reason that my Scouts’ pants were not comfortable. Some friends did it simply to prove that they had the guts to challenge the rule.


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So far, one can see that the resistance against the standardization of school uniforms has a myriad faces: some are truly political in nature, some are merely done for aesthetic reasons. The background and objective of each act of defiance can differ greatly from one to another. I hereby try to define five kinds of resistance against the school uniform.

First, as can be seen in the controversy about the banning of the hijab at school, the resistance against the standard school uniform might have a great political meaning: it is an act to affirm one’s identity. This is because the standardized school uniform is not consistent with the self-identity that the students wish to convey. Second, some students might challenge the rule due to some inspiration from the world of fashion. Those who defy the rule because of this reason might feel that the style and the materials of the school uniform are very outdated, not in keeping with their youthful sense of fashion that has been driving them to appear cool according to the latest trends. Third, there are also some who become defiant because they are forced to be so, just as I was forced to wear the brown Scouts’ uniform over the blue pants when I was in junior-high, simply because my brown Scouts’ pants were not comfortable to wear. This kind of resistance is rather involuntary in nature, occurring when there is no other choice. Fourth, there is an act of defiance as a proof of boldness. Such an act of defiance is closely related with the youthful spirit of the students, who might feel that their pride can be further confirmed if they challenge the rule. Fifth, there is an act of defiance that takes place simply because it is possible. This is more influenced by external factors such as the lenient school regulations.

At the end of the day, we have a plurality of resistance with no single reason. One can only give a sketch of the variety of resistance, which culminates in one single conclusion: the effort at uniforming the students by means of school uniforms is an ever-failing endeavor.




Jakarta and Solo, June & August 2009
Translated by Rani Elsanti




HARIS FIRDAUS was born in Solo, 1986. Graduated from the Communication Department of the Faculty of Social Sciences, Universitas Sebelas Maret, Solo, in 2009. Creates a variety of writing: poems, short stories, general articles, and essays. Has been published in several mass media, for example Kompas, Media Indonesia, Suara Merdeka, and Solopos. Is active in the Kabut Institut, Pawon literary bulletin, and the Urban Discussion Group of Balai Soedjatmoko.


This essay was first written during the Visual Art Writing Workshop in June 2009 in ruangrupa, a contemporary art group in Jakarta that publishes Karbonjournal.org. This essay is then amended to become the version that you are currently reading.

The editor is grateful to Nuraini Juliastuti for the information about the book Outward Appearances. Dressing State and Society in Indonesia (Leiden: KILTV Press, 1997), edited by Henk Schulte Nordholt. We also thank Lalu Roisamri and Varadila from the JIFFest (Jakarta International Film Festival), for the access to the film of Gita Cinta dari SMA (Arizal, 1979). Our gratitude also goes to Prima Rusdi for lending us the DVD of Ada Apa Dengan Cinta? (Rudi Soedjarwo, 2002).