I stopped at Safeway, the only store I could find open along the freeway, in a desperate, unsuccessful search for a sports bra. When I got to the prison, I took off the offending garment in the restroom outside the gate and left it in my car, buttoned my jacket and spent the morning with my arms clutched tightly to my chest. On another morning I forgot completely that I was wearing the wrong bra and strode with oblivious confidence through the metal detector. I realized later, with some surprise, that I hadn't set it off, and that the wires on the bra must not have been metal. But I can't remember which bra that was, so the information has proved useless to me.
Women visiting their men in prison learn to dress to avoid being turned away.
For prison visits we dress like Puritans. Last December one inmate's large extended family drove en masse all the way from the Midwest for a holiday visit. They showed up in a procession of minivans, from which they emerged dressed entirely in white, except for the inmate's mother, who wore a red dress. They looked mysterious and wonderful, like acolytes of a religious sect traveling with their priestess. It seems that the man they were visiting had written them about the dress code, and they were taking no chances.