Grooming Rules May Have Inmates Singing Dress Blues
There really are fashion police.
And they’ll be walking a tougher beat inside the state’s prisons.
Changing the “grooming standards” there should mean a lot of barbering going on this winter.
For men, the proposed rules include: no beards, no mutton chop sideburns, no wigs or hairpieces unless medically necessary. Mustaches must extend to the corners of the mouth--but no more than a quarter-inch farther, meaning neither handlebar nor Hitler styles allowed. Hair is to be no longer than 3 inches, and “no lettering, numbering or designs of any kind cut, shaved [or] dyed” on the hair or scalp. For women: Hair below the shirt collar must be worn up. No hair beads. Clear nail polish acceptable, but no “flamboyant” cosmetic colors or false eyelashes.
No pierced body parts anywhere for any inmates, except on the ears, and in that case only for women, whose earrings--matching, please, and a max of one per ear--must be institutionally approved.
Among the reasons for the new policy: helping inmates get jobs outside, making it easier to identify and search them inside. Authorities want to “prevent hostilities” over body billboards such as the Hitler brush mustache. And escapees won’t be able to change their looks as easily with just a razor or scissors. (What, people escape from those places?)
The Department of Corrections expects that you’ll notice those gender differences, and it’s ready with a court precedent finding them acceptable. It doesn’t want women inmates to be “defeminized” by the code, and it points out that they don’t tend to fight or escape or rip out earrings or use them for weapons the way men do.
A public hearing is Dec. 12, just in time to do the Christmas shopping for your favorite inmate’s new look.
*
Sign language: From the way some people are carrying on, you’d think the town’s new sign said, “FIDEL Castro Valley Welcome.”
The aesthetics--and of course the $106,000 price tag--of the sign at the portals of town have occasioned hundreds of complaints--such as that of Steven Dimick, who calls it “tacky, an artistic travesty . . . [of] no redeeming social value”--and a few strongholds of support, as from Josie Rose, who sighs that “any time there is something new and controversial in Castro Valley, those who hate it make a lot of noise, but the issue soon dies down.”
If this is all they have to worry about in Castro Valley, it must be a paradise.
*
Boob-tube blues: If it’s not one televised body part making video waves, it’s another.
A Mountain View public access channel gave its usual multiple airings to a “Gen-X” program segment about penis piercing. The one viewer complaint wasn’t about public privates, but about safety, says KMVT General Manager Doug Broomfield: “One of the woman’s concerns was the ‘Don’t try this at home’ aspect. . . . She had channel-surfed and came right in the middle of it. Even if there had been a disclaimer [at the beginning], she wouldn’t have seen it. And this was a highlights show she saw, a ‘best of,’ and it used a small bit of the original program, [which] had said something about caution.”
And in October, the director of Contra Costa County’s cable station, CCTV, pulled the plug on rerunning a video titled “The New Self Breast Exam” after deciding that the woman touching her breasts to perform the test in the video amounted to unsuitable nudity.
Naturally, the issue reached the Board of Supervisors, where Supervisor Donna Gerber wanted the video back on TV: “I think [director Patricia Burke] was erring on the side of caution, which would be commendable, except that we’re dealing with an epidemic in which people are dying.” Before the hearing and a vote to rerun the video, board Chairman Mark De Saulnier watched the tape; he found it “very clinical. . . . ‘Melrose Place’ and ‘Beverly Hills [90210]’ are much more offensive to me.”
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)
Helping Caregivers
The state Department of Mental Health funds 11 caregiver resource centers to help those taking care of adults who have disabling brain diseases. Most are caring for Alzheimer’s patients or those with related dementias. The centers offer free or low-cost services. Information: (800) 445-8106.
*--*
Center Location Families servedin 1995-96 Del Oro Carmichael 4,480 Bay Area San Francisco 4,395 Valley Fresno 3,262 Inland San Bernardino 2,361 Southern San Diego 1,943 Los Angeles USC 1,851 Del Mar Salinas 1,627 Orange Fullerton 1,484 Mountain Chico 1,316 Coast Santa Barbara 1,215 Redwood Santa Rosa 1,195
*--*
Source: Family Caregiver Alliance, San Francisco
Researched by TRACY THOMAS / Los Angeles Times
*
One-offs: Though someone tried to blow the cover on a Sacramento sheriff’s sting operation with a 4-foot sign of a woman’s silhouette and the word “Decoy,” deputies still arrested 18 “just not very bright” men for soliciting prostitution. . . . The lawyer for a Riverside dairyman facing felony animal cruelty charges said the man acted legally to protect his livestock when he shot and killed two dogs lapping water from a puddle bordering his land. . . . A San Rafael businessman says that since a city tree was planted in front of his shop, an aquarium fish has died, his computer crashed and business dropped by two-thirds. So he wants it removed because it violates principles of feng shui, a Chinese tradition of harmonious arrangement.
EXIT LINE
“Science may say it’s OK, but perception is different.”
--Stanislaus County Supervisor Nick Blom. The county opted out of a plan to use treated human sewage as fertilizer, fearing that neighboring agricultural counties that ban the practice would use the issue to dis Stanislaus crops (although that might have been illegal if the Legislature OKd a law barring produce slander).
California Dateline appears every other Friday.
