JEFFERSON CITY Lawmakers are weighing in with their suggestions on how to best improve the Missouri House intern policy, and one early notion kicked around was establishing an intern dress code.

The idea was greeted with disdain by Democrats and set off a firestorm on social media, with critics arguing that it was victim-blaming that would do nothing to address the problem of sexual harassment.

U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill sent letters Tuesday afternoon to the lawmakers who proposed the idea, saying it “reeks of a desire to avoid holding fully accountable those who would prey upon young women and men seeking to begin honorable careers in public service.”

And not long after the discussion of a dress code became public Tuesday morning, House Speaker Todd Richardson, a Poplar Bluff Republican, released a statement putting the idea to rest.

The group of lawmakers officially tasked with developing a new intern policy “did not recommend, and the House will not be implementing, changes to the dress code as the House already has in place a code that applies to all members, staff and interns equally,” Richardson said in a statement released Tuesday afternoon.

Rep. Kevin Engler, a Farmington Republican, was chosen to lead the effort to craft a new policy after House Speaker John Diehl was forced to resign following revelations by The Star that he exchanged sexually suggestive texts with a 19-year-old House intern. Two months later, Sen. Paul LeVota, an Independence Democrat, announced his resignation after two interns accused him of sexual harassment.

Engler sent out a list of suggested changes to lawmakers Monday evening, which included ideas such as a minimum number of college credit hours and GPA for participation, mandatory training for interns and supervisors, and the creation of an ombudsman program.

He asked his colleagues to “review and send any specific recommendations regarding these criteria in writing as soon as possible.”

Among the first suggested additions to Engler’s list came from Rep. Bill Kidd, an Independence Republican, who responded almost immediately, “Intern dress code.”

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He was seconded by Republican Rep. Nick King of Liberty.

“We need a good, modest, conservative dress code for both the males and females,” King wrote in an email to colleagues. “Removing one more distraction will help everyone keep their focus on legislative matters.”

Rep. Kathy Swan, a Cape Girardeau Republican, said in an email that dress codes are common HR policies in the workplace.

“The most valuable and valid internship experiences are ones where interns are embedded in the work environment, which includes the same/similar job expectations as employees, including dress code,” Swan said.

But enthusiasm for the idea wasn’t shared by Democratic lawmakers.

“We’re really not going to require interns to dress so we’re less distracted, are we?” said Rep. Bill Otto, a St. Louis County Democrat. “All we need is a code of ethics and a penalty provision.”

Rep. Sue Meredith, a St. Louis Democrat, said she was getting the feeling “the finger is being pointed at the young, female interns.” The dress code, she said, should be “the same as for everyone in the House.”

A handbook given to all Missouri House interns this year says that lawmaking is “a professional activity, and those engaged in it must dress professionally and appropriately. Men are required to wear a jacket and necktie for admission to the side galleries of the House Chamber. Women should dress in appropriate business attire (such as dress, suit, dress slacks and jacket).”

Rep. Jeremy LaFaver, a Kansas City Democrat, said a dress code isn’t the problem.

“Harassing interns is” the problem, LaFaver said, later adding: “If my plaid jacket or the sight of a woman’s bare knee distracts you from your legislative duties, I would look for other work.”

In recent months, dozens of women — current and former interns, legislative aides, lobbyists and lawmakers — told The Star sexual harassment in the Capitol is commonplace. Rep.Stacey Newman, a St. Louis County Democrat, told her colleagues that “the sexual harassment that has been prevalent has nothing to do with what a female wears. This is not the 1950s. Harassment in the workplace is illegal and a woman’s attire does not give anyone the right to harass, regardless if they feel distracted.”

Newman suggested any proposed dress code be identical to one governing staff and legislators. Rep. Bill White, a Joplin Republican, agreed that “professional attire” should be a general standard.

Rep. Kip Kendrick, a Columbia Democrat who sits on the panel that is drafting the new policy, said the primary responsibility for ethical conduct “lies first and foremost with members of the House.”

“We should never infer that the problem –– and therefore its remedies –– lies with the student interns,” he said.

Taylor Hirth and Alissa Hembree, the interns whose allegations of sexual harassment against Sen. Paul LeVota forced him to resign, released a joint statement Tuesday afternoon expressing disappointment in some of the changes being proposed.

“Suggestions requiring certain GPAs, increased supervision and mandatory dress codes suggest that the interns are lacking in quality, knowledge, or character and are in some way to blame for the harassment they experience,” Hirth and Hembree said. “Additionally, it implies that those perpetuating this behavior are unable to control their own behaviors.”

McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat, has previously told of being harassed when she was an intern in Jefferson City decades ago. She has said that she is working to create an advocacy organization to help victims of sexual harassment in Missouri’s Capitol after the spate of scandals involving interns.

Engler shared a few of the proposals, such as establishing an ombudsman program, with The Star last week. He said that after his House colleagues have a chance to weigh in and share ideas he hopes to have a final draft that can be reviewed and released to the public by the veto session on Sept. 16.

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Here are some numbers that illustrate the insanity of women’s clothing sizes: A size 8 dress today is nearly the equivalent of a size 16 dress in 1958. And a size 8 dress of 1958 doesn’t even have a modern-day equivalent — the waist and bust measurements of a Mad Men-era 8 come in smaller than today’s size 00.

These measurements come from official sizing standards once maintained by the National Bureau of Standards (now the National Institute of Standards and Technology), and taken over in recent years by the American Society of Testing and Materials. Data visualizer Max Galka recently unearthed them for a blog post on America’s obesity epidemic.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data show that the average American woman today weighs about as much as the average 1960s man. And while the weight story is pretty straightforward — Americans got heavier — the story behind the dress sizes is a little more complicated, as any woman who’s ever shopped for clothes could probably tell you.

As Julia Felsenthal detailed over at Slate, today’s women’s clothing sizes have their roots in a depression-era government project to define the Average American Woman by sending a pair of statisticians to survey and measure nearly 15,000 women. They “hoped to determine whether any proportional relationships existed among measurements that could be broadly applied to create a simple, standardized system of sizing,” Felsenthal writes.

Sadly, they failed. Not surprisingly, women’s bodies defied standardization. The project did yield one lasting contribution to women’s clothing: the statisticians were the first to propose the notion of arbitrary numerical sizes that weren’t based on any specific measurement — similar to shoe sizes.

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The government didn’t return to the project until the late 1950s, when the National Bureau of Standards published “Body Measurements for the Sizing of Women’s Patterns and Apparel” in 1958. The standard was based on the 15,000 women interviewed previously, with the addition of a group of women who had been in the Army during World War II. The document’s purpose? “To provide the consumer with a means of identifying her body type and size from the wide range of body types covered, and enable her to be fitted properly by the same size regardless of price, type of apparel, or manufacturer of the garment.”

The standard included the first modern women’s clothing size charts, and it provides the first datapoints. Women’s sizes ranged from 8 to 42. A size 8 woman had a bust of 31 inches, a 23.5 inch waist, and a weight of 98 pounds.

The government updated these standards again in 1970. But already, manufacturers were getting restless, Slate’s Felsenthal writes. It became apparent that the “representative” women measured for the standard weren’t representative at all. Non-white women were excluded. The group of women from the Army were almost certainly fitter than the average American woman. By 1983, the government ditched the standard completely. Manufacturers were left to define sizes as they saw fit.

Enter the era of vanity sizing. Clothing manufacturers realized that they could flatter consumers by revising sizes downward. The measurements that added up to a size 12 in 1958 would get redefined to a size 6 by 2011. And different manufacturers defined sizes differently too — a fascinating New York Times graphic from 2011 shows how a size 8 waist measurement could differ by as much as 5 inches of cloth between different designers.

The American Society of Testing and Materials, a non-governmental international standards organization, began trying to restandardize women’s sizes in the 1990s. But by then, the sizing genie was well out of the bottle. But if you’ve dealt with the frustration of buying or trying on women’s clothes recently — particularly if you’re short, tall, or in any way idiosyncratically shaped — you know that most manufacturers ignore these standards. It doesn’t help that the testing society charges for access to its sizing tables. What good’s a standard if you keep it under lock and key?

So women are left to navigate the chaos of arbitrary sizing on their own. So much for enabling women “to be fitted properly by the same size regardless of price, type of apparel, or manufacturer of the garment,” as the government’s 1958 standard loftily envisioned.

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