VHere’s comments are not 100% wrong, they are actually mostly right. Whether he has PTSD to deal with does not subtract from their accuracy. Countless mussar shmuesses in high school and onward (apologies to you Syag if you are male, but if I remember correctly you are female) emphasized the Torah Jew Uniform in abject opposition to the non-uniformed , someone who cannot possibly be a Torah Jew. Referencing my parenthetical supposition, you have likely never heard these shmuesses, but I have heard many, and all yeshiva boys I know will corroborate this endemic message. The message is very clear, and it is as I stated: “A non-uniformed boy cannot be a Torah Jew.”
It is stated simply like that, and the dogma is that simple.
The only blatant inaccuracy in VHere’s comments is that he believes this approach has been around 30-40 years. I heard it close to 50 years ago. It hasn’t changed much, and history has shown that it enjoys tremendous success. That is a sad presentation.
Again parenthetically, it was no surprise that 10-15 years ago a major yeshiva photoshopped two blue shirts out of a full bes medrash picture featured in the yeshiva calendar. The photograph was used one year, and the identical photograph was reused the following year sans the two lonely light-blue shirts. Bad publicity that was fixed. The message was obvious. It is what it is. You are better off defending it than denying it.