Dress Coded

Content Warning: Dress Coded mentions a school shooting and depicts sexism, racism, ableism, body shaming, and addiction.

This section covers Chapter 1: “Dress Coded: A Podcast, Episode One”; Chapter 2: “Off-Air”; Chapter 3: “Letter to Fourth Graders”; Chapter 4: “Backstory”; and Chapter 5: “Letter to Parents.”

Eighth grader Molly Frost records the first podcast of her life in her treehouse, in order to tell the story of her classmate, Olivia Bonaventura of Fisher Middle School, who got dress coded. Molly used to be close with Olivia and another girl named Pearl, but they drifted apart in the seventh grade when Olivia and Pearl got into honors classes. She is now close friends with Navya, a passionate lacrosse player; Ashley, who comes from a wealthy family; and Bea, a talented artist. Molly thinks the girls like her because she is funny, as she is fairly average otherwise, though better at academics and such than her eleventh-grader brother, Danny, who is addicted to vaping and sells pods to middle schoolers.

Molly begins her podcast by describing how she saw Mr. Dern, a math teacher, and Dr. Couchman, the principal, yelling at Olivia: She “witnessed a piece of [Olivia’s] soul leave her body” (3), which is why she reached out to her a couple of days later.