The excellent Dress Code Guidebook explains the rules for Top Cover, Bottom Cover and Body Cover very clearly. However, some people learn better by example and it can be a little difficult some times to keep track of these three concepts at the same time.

Top Cover

Let’s take a very easy example first. This girl has top cover, but no bottom cover. That should be clear enough to everyone.

Top Cover that crosses the belly button

This girl is studying and do not have any bottom cover. Or does she?

The code says that a top is any article of clothing that covers the top part of your body without covering any part of your body below your belly button

This top does go beyond the belly button, but any sensible person would say that this is a top. Thankfully the code takes this into account:

In designing the Dress Code, we recognize that some shirts are designed to cover a girl’s belly button.  These are still considered tops as long as they don’t cover her pubic bone or any part of her butt crack.

Good, so as you would expect, this is indeed considered a top. So the code is a bit flexible here, but that also means it is a little unclear. The belly button is easy to spot (or not) but would this also constitute just a Top Cover? I guess it would be a judgement call.

Bottom Cover

This girl is clearly wearing a top, but is she wearing a bottom?

Yes! Her stockings count as a bottom. Even though there are strictly speaking two items of clothing in that bottom, it counts as one bottom. The wisdom of the code has specifically addressed this as well.

But what about the shoes? Are they ignored? I honestly don’t know and cannot find it in the code. Maybe someone else knows and can put it in the comments.

Body Cover

When a piece of clothing covers both the top and bottom, it is called a Body Cover. Here is one such example.

A body cover is fully allowed, but there is actually an infraction here. Can anyone guess what it is?

Yes, of course, she is wearing both a Body Cover and also a Bottom Cover, her bush to be specific. You’re only allowed to wear one Bottom Cover and as a bush counts as one, this girl is wearing two and very clearly so.

Here is an example of correct use of the bush based Bottom Cover. She is wearing a t-shirt as a top and despite it going past her belly button, it is still considered a top. And then she wears a bush as her bottom.

Her bush is what we categorize as a fluffy bush, but the code does not specifically address different bush types. A bush is a bush. That’s also why girls should decide whether they want to use a bush as a bottom cover or they want to be cleanly shaven.

So I hope that shed some extra light on how the code works in terms of Top Cover, Bottom over and Body Cover.