“‘She’s going to grow up to be a slut and a prostitute,’” said Catherine Pearlman, quoting a response she received to a post she had made regarding the dress code at her daughter’s school.
The issue of school dress codes has been around for awhile now, but it has recently been making headlines more and more lately. Dress codes seem to be targeting female students by banning short shorts, spaghetti straps, low cut shirts and more.
These codes are intended to minimize distractions in the classroom. Who is being protected by dress codes? Supposedly, girls are meant to cover up so as not to distract the boys with their scandalous shoulders and tight-fitting pants. One girl had been told that the reason she wasn’t allowed to wear yoga pants was that “the boys would get turned on and then be embarrassed.”
Telling young girls that they shouldn’t wear certain clothing items because it could bring unwanted attention from boys teaches them to be ashamed of themselves and feel guilty for something that isn’t their fault. Why are we telling girls to change their clothes when we should be telling boys to change their behavior?
The real distraction is when female students are sent to the dean and told to obtain a sweatshirt or a different pair of pants before returning to class. This takes away valuable learning time and can cause more serious repercussions than simply having to stare at someone’s bare shoulders for an entire class period.
At Creek, I have witnessed a girl in my freshman history class pulled into the hallway and reprimanded because she was wearing a top with spaghetti straps. This was not only a disruption to our learning directly from the teacher, but it was also embarrassing for the girl to whom the incident occurred. Just this year, I was in class when two boys completely removed their shirts, yet neither one of them received any disciplinary actions.
There is a double standard for girls and boys when it comes to how they dress and it is simply because some sexist man 100 years ago decided that while yes, girls could be in school, they could not provide any distractions to the nice young men the schools were raising. While this may have been acceptable at that time, fashion and gender-roles are changing. When it comes to schooling, male and female students should be equal. There is no reason that girls should have to worry about facing punishment when they pick out their clothes every morning while boys can throw on whatever they wish without having to question whether or not they could get in trouble for the clothing choices.
In terms of fashion, most brands with female customers have been making backless shirts or shirts with a cold-shoulder. Yoga pants and leggings are tight, but they are among the most comfortable bottoms available to women and are therefore more often made and sold. Rarely these days do you see a fashion-forward shirt that covers the shoulders and collarbone and has no holes or a tight fit. Even with younger girls, there are many shirts which would not be up to dress code standards. If clothing isn’t sold to meet the dress code, how can we expect girls to be able to follow it?
The standards set forth in the dress code for girls eventually ends up leading to rxxe culture. When girls are taught at school to cover up because they’re body parts are distracting to male classmates and it’s their fault if a boy can’t focus on the lesson, it leads them to think that they are always responsible for others’ actions just because they dressed a certain way. On the other side of this, boys learn that the female body is a sexual object which can easily distract them and any desires they have or actions they take are not their fault because the girl chose to dress the way she did. This leads to the “she was asking for it” argument made so often in rxxe culture today.
Dress codes need to be rethought so as to allow girls to feel proud of who they are and to teach boys that they need to take responsibility for themselves rather than just blaming their actions on the way someone else chose to dress herself.