Wearing short skirts and clothing that shows off her figure means she’s asking for it. This is the message that some schools give to students because of the dress code policy in place.
If a student is told to leave their prom because they have too much skin showing or asked to change during school because their clothes revealed their figure, it can be very embarrassing for a teen. These responses to a student’s wardrobe have long-term effects.
It’s one thing to teach a student how to dress appropriately for certain occasions, but it’s another to give repercussions for something as menial as wearing a strap that is the width of two fingers instead of three in the classroom.
The Everyday Sexism Project works to acknowledge the instances where sexism takes place on a daily basis. On this site, people are able to share their stories of harassment and inequality in their everyday lives.
In “How School Dress Codes Shame Girls and Perpetuate Rape Culture,” Laura Bates wrote a passage that was sent into the Everyday Sexism Project.
“I got dress coded at my school for wearing shorts. After I left the principal’s office with a detention, I walked past another student wearing a shirt depicting two stick figures: the male holding down the female’s head in his crotch and saying ‘good girls swallow.’ Teachers walked right past him and didn’t say a thing.”
The blame should not be placed solely on male students because the teachers and administration are the ones enforcing these rules and deciding who gets punished for what.
While these dress code policies are meant to be broad and geared toward any gender, they seem to be directed toward young, attacking them for distracting male students. Female students have much stricter dress code policies they must follow as opposed to male students who don’t get as much attention toward their clothing choices.
The plaid skirts and polo shirt uniforms were first introduced into schools in the U.S. in the 1900s. Since then, students attending private schools have generally had to wear the chosen attire for their school. This form of dress code was put in place so that students would all look equal, allowing them to focus more on their studies.
Public schools adopted the first dress code policies that did not include uniforms in 1969 by the Supreme Court. This law was put into place after the case of “Tinker vs. Des Moines Independent School District” when black armbands protesting the Vietnam war were worn to the high school by several students. The Court wanted to keep students from expressing themselves at school in ways that could potentially promote violence or violate the rights of their peers.
As someone who wore a uniform for about 13 years in Catholic schools, I can say that they are restrictive in expression and even though we all wore the same thing, female students were the ones most often told to button their shirts higher and roll down their sleeves. So, uniforms or no uniforms, the same issues are prevalent.
The standard uniform for girls consisted of tights without rips, a skirt of the appropriate length, a button-up shirt with the school logo in the corner, hair of a natural color and shoes that were flat, had a closed toe and a closed heel. For boys, the rules were a bit simpler. Khaki or navy-blue pants, the same button-up shirt, the same style shoes, and hair that was not long enough to touch the collar of their shirt.
With traditional and outdated policies, students may feel as though they cannot express themselves with the gender that they identify as. Luckily at this particular school, female students were also allowed to wear navy or khaki pants if they chose to, making the policy more gender neutral.
If someone was caught during school hours with an untucked shirt or a rip in their tights, they would be sent to the front office to change, given a detention or worst of all, sent home to change.
Being called out in class and being told to leave to change can be distressing for a student. This takes away time that they would instead be in class learning.
Most of these dress codes also apply in grade schools. This is a time when students’ minds and bodies are starting to have significant developments. Being a tween or a teenager can be difficult during this time because of the new changes that are happening to their bodies. Being told a shirt is too tight because their breasts are more developed than other classmates or that their skirt is too short because their legs got longer over the summer can make a student feel even more insecure and uncomfortable.
“The feedback that their dress elicits is an important variable in their ongoing identity development,” said Associate Professor of Psychology Paul Mullen.
Being heavily criticized for what they are wearing in school could be a student’s first memory of harassment.
Dress codes are not only found in grade schools and high schools, but also in college, in the workplace and on sports teams.
Once students get to college, they generally do not have to follow as strict of a dress code that they had in the past.
“That’s a real privilege of the discipline,” said Assistant Provost for Teaching and Learning Jennifer Keys. “Students come to college and this is a time of self-expression and finding yourself and … to institute these types of rules would be very paternalistic for students and I can’t imagine that it would be well-received.”
Many offices are now implementing a more informal dress code for their employees. The rules are not so strict on wearing jeans, having tattoos or shirts that show what that individual’s beliefs are. Maybe this is something for schools to consider.
When a student wears something that could be considered distracting to the other students, why should that student get in trouble? Why is it their fault that the other students can’t stay focused on their own bodies and their own work.
The message that school dress codes teach young women is that their bodies “are dangerous, powerful and sexualized, and that boys are biologically programmed to objectify and harass them. It prepares them for college life, where as many as 1 in 5 women are sexually assaulted but society will blame and question and silence them, while perpetrators are rarely disciplined,” said Bates.
