A review by lawbooks600
Dress Coded by Carrie Firestone

emotional medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Representation: Black and Asian characters, character with a physical disability
Score: Six out of ten.

Is it me or have I seen something like this before? I saw Dress Coded circling my recommendations till I finally saw it in a library and decided to pick it up. I glanced at the blurb, noticing similarities with another flawed and okay novel called Does My Body Offend You, and I felt the same way when I closed the final page of Dress Coded.

It starts with Molly going to her school when she notices some school authorities pull over her women peers over their clothes, saying they break the dress code, causing Molly to start a podcast about the issue. I like the concept, the theme of rebellion and the message of defying systemic sexism, but there were so many flaws I didn't know where to begin, but I'll try: for a book barely over 300 pages, it's slow paced with some pages not dedicated to the central theme that if removed could've tightened the reading experience. The characters are hard to connect or relate with, but I don't think that's Firestone's fault, instead I might not be the target audience, and another reason might be seeing dress coding as an American problem. Where I live, schools don't have dress codes--they have uniforms and don't allow free dress unlike in America, so I can see why I couldn't relate to Dress Coded. The plot has so many subplots that detract from it I found it disjointed, like the ones about traumatic brain injuries, cerebral palsy, drug use and most prominently, vaping (unfortunately, it is a problem here too,) but what has that got to do with dress coding, I struggle to understand. Removing unneeded subplots could be an improvement. Dress Coded is Does My Body Offend You for a younger audience since both discuss similar themes, but the former's writing style is basic (I think that's intentional,) but I found Dress Coded to be unrealistic sometimes. This dress coding issue has been going on for years according to the narrative and people tried to stop it but that didn't work, but that begs the question of how has this been a problem for so long? How? The characters were on their own as adults weren't by their side, which I found polarising (adding more supportive adults would've balanced everything out.) At least the conclusion is a high note when I saw a new rewritten dress code.
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