This past weekend, I got to go down to Florida to see my best friend and watch her little girl while she was at work. Once I got to the house, we all decided to go out to dinner, which meant putting on "real clothes" as opposed to the comfortable yet frumpy items we all like to wear around the house. Rose*, my friend's daughter, changed into a t-shirt with glitter text relating to mermaids and a pair of blue drawstring shorts, you know, standard child clothing. She then handed me a crumpled up piece of blue paper and said, "Apparently, I'm not allowed to wear this to school next year because it's too revealing." On the paper were so many guidelines that they had to use size 8 font to squeeze it all onto one page. Rose prompted me to read the text so that I could see exactly what ridiculousness she would have to deal with come fall.
No skirts above the knee
No headbands or hair accessories of any kind
No unnatural hair colors
No hair in the face
No jewelry other than one earring in each earlobe
No spaghetti straps
No bra straps showing
No nail polish
These are just a few of the ridiculous guidelines. Trust me, you don't want me to type out the entire dress code, it will make you dizzy. Many of the rules contradict themselves such as the fact that you can't have hair in your face, but aren't allowed to pull it back with a headband or hair accessory. What constitutes a hair accessory? Are students just expected to keep their hair short? How do these rules make any sense? Why not just have everyone wear uniforms if the school is this concerned with how children express themselves through their clothing? Above anything else, though, the thing that upset me most was that all but three of the rules apply specifically to female students. The reason the school insists that the female students adhere to these ridiculous codes is to prevent them from distracting the male students. At this point, I should probably tell you the most disturbing part of this. Rose is ten.
Her school wants to prevent ten-year-old girls from showing off their sexy, sexy shoulders so that the ten-year-old boys can learn without distractions. WHAT?!?! First off, I don't know anyone that has ever looked at a shoulder and been overcome with lust. As I say this, there is probably someone with an oddly specific fetish shouting otherwise at the screen, but for the most part shoulders are not exactly "sexy" body parts.
Second, these kids are ten! They are still children, they're not thinking about sex right now. They may start to develop crushes or start having feelings they don't quite understand yet, but that's it right now. I'm a lot more weirded out by the adults putting together the dress code than I am the other students. If an adult has a problem with seeing a ten-year-old's shoulders, they probably should be on a list somewhere and not be working with children in the first place.
These unnecessarily complex guidelines also end up creating lots of stress for the female students. Last weekend, Rose wanted to go into Justice, a clothing store for girls, to look around. Every rack we walked past, Rose would say, "I can't wear that to school" in a frustrated manner. The clothes at Justice are not immodest or lewd in any way, I used to buy clothes for school there when I was a kid (and it was still called Limited Too) and while tastes have changed slightly, the clothes are not that much different. Rose told me all about how most of the clothes in her closet didn't fit the school's dress code and she had no idea what she was supposed to wear once school started. How can the girls at this school be relaxed enough to learn when they can't figure out if their outfit fits in with the arcane rules or will get them sent home? That seems more like a distracted learning environment than a male student catching a glimpse of a bra strap.
Also, notice how there is an emphasis to provide a distraction-free environment for the boys specifically. Codes like this teach young girls that their needs are secondary to men. It's fine if they have daily anxiety attacks about whether or not their clothing will get them sent home as long as the boys are able to learn without the threat of seeing a knee. It teaches girls that they are unimportant and that they are a nuisance. This is not okay. It also has negative effects on the boys. It teaches them that women are unworthy of respect. It tells them that they have no self-control, much like animals. It tells them that women are objects, not people. It furthers the dangers of patriarchal society. If you send a girl home for distracting a boy, you effectively say her education is unimportant.
If your son is complaining about the fact that a girl's bra strap is showing, tell him that he needs to get over it. Bra straps fall down sometimes, no need to call in the national guard about it. If a little girl's shoulder is so distracting to a little boy, it's his problem. Women and girls are people and need to be treated as such. No amount of covering up ever prevents unwanted male attention. If a boy is staring at a girl's chest and making her uncomfortable in the classroom, he needs to be disciplined, not her. The girl was paying attention to the teacher and doing what she came to school to do, the boy was not. Until we can move past reprimanding girls for having the nerve to inhabit female bodies, we cannot move forward as a society. Schools should be positive places where children can be challenged with coursework, they shouldn't create unnecessary stress over something as trivial as wardrobe choices. Let the girls learn. That's what they're there for. The only disturbance in the learning process is the dress code.
