In April, 2013, a school principal in Georgia forced a 6-year-old kindergartner to change out of her short skirt during a school day. The reason? He deemed the skirt “a distraction to other students.” While this situation raises the question “At what age do boys begin getting distracted by girls’ bodies?” the better question to ask is “At what age are girls expected to prevent boys from getting distracted by their bodies?” School dress codes have undergone serious debate by parents and educators, with some arguing that dress codes encourage students to take school seriously and prevent distraction, while others claim that dress codes are sexist towards young girls and perpetuate rape culture. School dress codes are just one example of the fact that American society holds girls responsible for their own objectification, and blames girls for the fact that their bodies are “distracting.”
I don’t remember much about my first day of middle school, but I do recall how unfair I thought was when the boys were allowed extra recess while the girls were called inside for an assembly about dress code. Besides the usual instructions (shorts must be longer than your fingertips, tank top straps must be wider than two fingers), we were told to “keep it classy” because we didn’t “want boys to stare at us.” This seems to be a common reason for enforcing dress codes in schools.
In 2014, a middle school in Northern California banned students from wearing leggings and yoga pants because “it distracts the boys.” A high school in Minnesota also banned yoga pants, when the principal sent out an email to parents explaining that “a girl’s backside can be too closely defined, which can be highly distracting to other students.” When dress codes are instituted solely because a girl’s body may attract male attention, school administrators prove that not only do they perceive a female’s body as inherently sexual and distracting, but that they value boys’ attention in school more than they value girls’. Girls are regularly pulled out of classrooms and sent home because their clothes are too revealing, while their male counterparts who “couldn't focus” because of them stay for the rest of the lesson. Why is it a problem when a boy can’t pay attention in class, but not when a girl is forced to miss the class?
Across the United States, school dress codes put “the onus on young women to prevent from being ogled or objectified instead of teaching those responsible to learn to respect a woman’s body." Although school dress codes seem like they should be the least of feminists’ worries, they instill a poisonous way of thinking into childrens’ heads: that women’s clothing choices are responsible for how much respect they receive. Victim-blaming is a prominent part of America’s rape culture, and the reason why one of the most commonly asked questions after a woman reports being raped is “What was she wearing?” The National Criminal Justice Reference Service cites the sexual objectification of females as the top cause of rape culture. When impressionable children grow up seeing their female classmates chastised for wearing shorts or tight pants while disrespectful objectification by their male classmates is normalized, they will begin to believe that women are responsible for any degrading speech or sexual assault that befalls them. Rather than simply characterizing young boys as wild animals who can’t control themselves at the sight of a bra strap, we must teach them to respect girls regardless of their clothing. The first step is to eliminate all sexist dress codes from schools— girls should be allowed to wear shorts on a hot day and show their shoulders without being objectified, and young boys deserve the chance to prove that society’s stereotypes that classify them as biologically incapable of respecting women are simply not true.
