High school is already a trying time for adolescences trying to figure out who they are and where they fit. They’re battling hormones and social constructs laid out for them, the last thing they need is their education disrupted because of something so minor as their choice of clothing.
At a high school in Montana, young Kaitlyn Juvik was excused from class to deal with her clothing choice. She had simply chosen not to wear a bra. Her teacher had deemed it inappropriate.
If you have breasts, take a moment to look down at your own body. How noticeable is it when you take your bra off? If you don’t have breasts, you can imagine that some are easily noticeable, but most woman can walk around without a bra and not raise an eyebrow.
Fairly often, you have to truly look at someone’s chest before you can determine if there is a bra or not. It also depends on what she has chosen to wear, as some shirts can reveal more than other shirts; same with dresses.
Why is this a problem? Bras are uncomfortable. Either they’re too tight and leave ghastly red marks along our shoulders, sides, and back, or the underwire is stabbing your armpit all day long.
If you went to high school, you often heard a teacher telling a young girl to cover her bra strap. Having visible evidence of wearing a bra is somehow distracting in the classroom. Is the problem wearing the bra or not wearing the bra?
These high schools make it unclear every time they pull a girl out of class, stopping her education to either be sent home to change or forced to wear some special item the school saves for these situations.
At college, no one is telling you to cover up or put a bra on, so why is it such a problem in high school? We stop the learning process every time we take a child out of that classroom to tell them they aren’t fit to be in just because of what they are wearing. If you choose to wear a tank top in the hot August days in the south, you better have a jacket to cover up with, else you are going home.
At the Montana high school, girls have since held a protest by all attending school braless, and have set up a Facebook page called “No Bra, No Problem.” The boys have also joined in, commenting on the ridiculous dress code policies by wearing bras outside of their shirts.
What does a dress code do to help children to learn in school? We need a reform on how we look at clothing choices. They change over the years, but where do the distractions truly start? If my shoulder is showing how many boys have trouble focusing? If I choose to let my breasts free from their cage for the day, who is it hurting?
As a woman who is frequently in an all-male setting in college, I have gone to class in tank tops and worn dresses without a bra, and guess what? The boys learn just as well as when I wear a sweater and jeans. None of them are distracted, and none of them treat me differently.
Maybe the problem isn’t what we choose to wear, but what society says about the exposed skin in a school setting.
