My school was pretty strict about its uniform policy. Wearing a coat that wasn’t brown could get you sent home and wearing the wrong coloured socks meant you had to wear someone else’s manky old footwear from some kind of ‘spares’ bin.
So I was always envious of American kids I saw on TV, who seemed able to wear whatever they wanted to school, with no apparent rules whatsoever.
It turns out, not so much. Barely a week passes where, here or in the US, there is not a story about someone (invariably a girl) being sent home from school, or disciplined, or banned from her prom, for wearing something that the school leaders feel is unacceptable.
Now, we’re not talking about basques and stockings and suspenders here, we’re talking about things like tops that are sleeveless or slightly low cut.
And the thing that keeps coming up, the issue that recurs every time I see one of these stories, is the reasoning behind these bans: it will distract the boys and the teachers. You can’t expect a boy to learn if a girl in his class has her shoulders on show? You can’t expect a teacher to teach if a girl in his class is showing her collar bones?
Interrupting girls’ education in order to pander to boys’ and men’s inability to control their gaze should never be acceptable, and it certainly should not be as commonplace as it appears to be right now. It is body shaming these young girls and it penalises them for wearing completely normal, fashionable clothes.
There is no good reason for girls to be sent home to change when nobody interrupts boys playing football in the lunch break because they’ve got shorts on, or basketball players during a match because their shoulders are visible. The penalty is for being a girl, and for daring to have an inch of their body on show in the presence of boy and men. This is unfair. So I’ve brought together some of the most egregious examples to really and truly highlight the issue.
1. Lizzy Martinez
Lizzy Martinez is a Florida schoolgirl who attended school last week wearing a baggy Calvin Klein top with no bra underneath. After being reported by a male classmate and a teacher, she was told that she was distracting other pupils and was asked to jiggle and jump in front of senior staff so that they could see how much her breasts moved, and those staff ruled that she should put plasters on her nipples. Lizzy was left humiliated and in tears.
2. Ms. Levy
The granddaughter of Laurie Levy (whose surname may not be Levy but her name has been withheld for privacy reasons), aged just 9, wore a tank top on a hot summer day and violated her school’s dress code. She was sent by her teacher to the nurse, who gave her a white boys’ t-shirt to wear instead.
3. Jane Doe
This anonymous 15-year-old girl was given an in-school suspension for wearing shorts that were apparently “too short”. The shorts, which came down to her mid thigh, led a teacher to tell her that her “suggestive” clothing meant she was “asking for it”.
4. Ms Pearlman
The daughter of Catherine Pearlman was sent home with a note to her parents saying that she had been dressed inappropriately at school. She was forced to change her shorts, which were deemed too short because they were higher than her fingers when her arms were by her side, and switch into some boys’ shorts that had questionable hygiene, because they were marginally longer.
In her post, Catherine Pearlman talks about the difficulty of buying clothes that meet strict school dress codes for girls, especially when they are tall like her daughter is.
The same girl had previously been shamed for wearing yoga pants, as this could be a distraction for the boys. How about teaching boys to concentrate on their work and not sexualise and objectify girls, rather than correcting every girl who expresses herself through her clothing (or those who just grab something out of the wardrobe first thing, too)?
As Catherine Pearlman says, “Banning yoga pants for the purpose of avoiding unwanted erections sends the message that boys are programmed to respond and can’t help what their bodies do. Boys and men are responsible for their actions. It’s no wonder some don’t stop unwanted sexual advances when they hear a woman saying, “No.” Short skirts and leggings don’t cause sexual advances—the inability to manage one’s desires does.
“It isn’t the responsibility of my daughter (or any daughter) to help boys manage sexual urges. It is the responsibility of the boys. It isn’t OK to start shaming girls about their bodies by telling them to obsessively cover up. And girls should not have to disregard their own comfort to protect the comfort of the boys around them.”
5. Codie Webster
Codie Webster was reported to her parents for wearing trousers that were too tight. Despite being bought from Tesco (where many parents in the UK buy uniforms for state schools), they were considered to be too tight and unsuitable, and Codie was pulled from important classes until they were replaced by something baggier.
6. Kambrya College
Kambrya College near Melbourne, Australia, managed to slut shame all the girls at their school during a talk they received that told them their legs were distracting to the boys and that they should measure their skirt lengths.
One parent wrote on Facebook, “They feel their school has sexualised and demonised them, and compounded the problem by sending a strong message that it is them, the girls, who are responsible for the boys’ behaviour, and that the boys are the victims here.”
7. Tottenville High School
This school in New York shocked its population by handing out 200 detention slips for uniform breaches in the first few days of the school year. The key point to note is that 90% of these went to girls; apparently their clothes were too distracting, deemed “disruptive to teaching and learning”.
If schools can’t handle their children wearing clothes that are clearly popular (if 180 girls were wearing them in order to receive detentions), they need to reassess their priorities. Teach teachers and pupils to cope with what their classmates and pupils are wearing rather than fall into some pit of being unable to tolerate the slightest hint of skin. It’s a skill that will help them through life and it will stop girls’ educations from being disrupted in the meantime.