Being a female in the high school system, have a lot to say about the dress code. Probably a little too much for my own good, but I am by far not the first one who has brought this to anyone's attention. So here is a little story that made me an advocate for loosening up a bit on these codes.

Leggings: the forbidden form of leg wear

Before first period, a girl friend and I were chatting by the lockers. I was wearing a long and chunky sweater, LEGGINGS (god forbid), knee socks, and rain boots. Let the record show, the butt was covered.

Late February on the Cape has never been good to anyone. My friend was wearing a plain shirt with a long cardigan, LEGGINGS and similar rain boots. Not to toot our own horns or anything, but we are pretty well-dressed people, and don't strive to look "inappropriate" especially at 8 a.m. in February at school. Thinking we are going to continue on with our day, one of the more frightening teachers at our school had called us out from down the hall for wearing yoga pants and told us to immediately see the high school dean to figure out our punishment and to deal with the horrible choice we had both made this morning.

Obviously, we both immediately start crying on our way to the deans office. At our school, it's a pretty close knit community so getting punished is kind of a big deal. As we get to his office, he looks at us and is immediately worried as to why there are two crying sixteen year olds in his office before first period and we both immediately apologize for our forbidden form of leg wear and we kept babbling and it was really just such a distraught mess. He sympathetically tells us not to worry and to not break the dress code again and that we can go on with our day. He wasn’t in the slightest bit mad or upset, he actually laughed a little when he found out we were crying about our pants. So moral of the story is, we get yelled at and cried for no reason so leggings shouldn't be dress coded. And as we went on to our day, we had asked other teachers what they had thought and they agreed that we looked appropriate for school and shouldn't have gotten yelled at.

Shoulders: bra straps (??!?!)

Our school took a day to do water testing around the Cape to learn about whats actually in the natural bodies of water. This date being in late May, was mid 70's and sunny. We were told we could dress comfortably to the weather and to dress actively. I had worn a tee shirt and gym shorts and a friend of mine was wearing a wide strap running tank top and gym shorts as well but god forbid we see her shoulders. She was told she was making faculty uncomfortable because her sports bra strap was visible. The teacher had wanted her to go to change but she didn't prepare for this so the teacher gave my friend her jacket to wear in 70 degree weather while she managed to boil through out the day. Since when did someones standard of appropriateness depict whether of not my friend could dress comfortably on this warm day?

So I am just here to enforce the over popular opinion of loosening up about the dress code. We are here to learn, not be evaluated by our fashions.