On my honor I will… shave?

While at BYU I often wondered why “dress and grooming standards” were subsumed under “the honor code”. Can someone please explain this to me?

Why isn’t dress and grooming standards in a category of it’s own? I guess the reason I’m bothered by this was because, as circumstances would have it, I occasionally went off to class having forgot to shave, and was warned a few times about violating “the honor code”. I couldn’t help but feeling that in essence my personal “honor” was being challenged. Was my 5 o’clock shadow somehow marking me as a “dishonorable” person?

Of course some of the root issues at play here are the relation between appearance and morality, the mediation of appearance between the inner-self and outter society, the social construction of meaning in symbols, and many others.

To see BYU’s honor code go here: http://honorcode.byu.edu/The_Honor_Code.htm