Going to college is eye opening in comparison to high school in a number of respects: professor-to-student interactions, the independence and freedom of it all, the reliable yet somehow simultaneously unreliable nature of the campus Wi-Fi. Chief among them is the complete and appropriate lack of a dress code and the ironic consequence of it being that no one really cares what anyone else is wearing.

Winding the clocks back a year or two, we end up in my hometown high school. Our test scores are decent, our sports teams are fairly successful, and arts programs and classes are there to begin with so you can’t complain. Yet, what I always found astonishing was the rather obvious and inherent sexism of our dress code. Everyone who went to high school is familiar with the common restrictions: no shorts above the fingertips, no ripped jeans, and no tank tops or showing any shoulder at all for women, and for the men…basically just don’t wear anything profane. Now me, being the little naïve high school freshman that I was at the time, thought that the dress code was reasonable and that you should dress respectfully when you go to school. Then something interesting happened: my school apparently began to allow boys to wear muscle shirts to school, a previously prohibited piece of clothing. That’s when I started to read between the lines.

Now, granted, some of the dress code is in fact reasonable, such as not wearing anything profane or explicit because, yes, that doesn’t belong in an academic setting. On the other hand, the most basic argument I hear for the dress code in regards to female restrictions is that “women shouldn’t be wearing something too revealing or potentially distracting to their fellow male students and risk hindering their education.” This is what was repeated to us at the beginning of every school year. This is what was instilled, that women who revealed too much shoulder or wore shorts that were deemed too short were a distraction to the male students. Not only is this reasoning painfully heteronormative, we now have a dress code built upon the male gaze and because of it, we limit female self-expression.

In my experience, what was truly distracting was the common lack of respect and decorum in the classroom by predominantly male students. Even if I am not a woman, if it was distracting and hindered to my education in any way, I’m sure it was felt equally among female students. But even then, little to no disciplinary action was taken place, under the justification of the increasingly ignorant adage “boys will be boys”, which basically give boys an excuse to behave obnoxiously and disrespectfully. This goes back to my previous statement of how muscle shirts, that not only showcase the arms but sometimes even the entire side of the torso, was given a thumbs up at my school. Why is it ok for guys to wear equally, if not more, revealing clothes then women at school?

Again, this goes back to the idea of the male gaze and consequently, the apparent lack of a female one. Look, hormones are raging no matter what gender we’re talking about, the only difference being that high school male teenagers lack the common decency to respectfully approach a woman of their age group and not objectify them. There are plenty of cases of high school rape victims and courtships gone wrong, all because male teenagers live in a society that fosters that entitlement, the objectification of women, and the complete lack to be able to take no for an answer. So, because we don’t teach our sons that women are not objects and that they don’t owe you anything, schools make up for it, under the pretense that it’s for a woman’s “own good”. This exact mentality is what is essentially reducing women to nothing more than something for guys to gawk at, while not offering any chance for accountability.

The measures my school took to women who violated the dress code were perhaps even more astounding. Wearing a shirt that showed an inch of shoulder? Wear a sweatshirt from the lost and found (didn’t matter how hot it was outside). Shorts too short or ripped jeans too ripped? Duct tape is the answer (?). Even in the most “extreme” cases, women would be sent home! In asking my friends on how their high schools approached the dress code, women who were playing basketball or something of the like were asked to sit out because their (forgive me for saying this) *bouncing* breasts were too distracting to the guys playing with them. Another friend also remarked that where she grew up, there were not a lot of clothing stores that offered school length appropriate clothing to begin with, and yet she was still expected to comply.

Obviously, the argument could be made that, even though the dress code is inherently problematic, you should follow it anyway for your own benefit. However, this is not a matter of “modesty” or “self-respect”, it’s the fact that girls as of this moment are not able to learn in whatever they are comfortable with. Administrative action should be taken towards male teenagers who make anyone feel uncomfortable in any way rather than force girls to accommodate a boys lack of self-control. It’s a matter of being fair and treating everyone equally; if men are allowed to wear revealing muscle shirts, women should be able to do the same. Your clothing plays no factor in your self-respect, its how you conduct yourself and how you behave. The societal over-sexualization of women is what primarily fosters this idea that revealing clothing is considered to be promiscuous. The heart of the problem lies with the boys that are not taught self-control or respect.

I’m not advocating for the complete abolition of high school dress code because, as I mentioned earlier, there are some stipulations that are necessary. Then again, college students do just fine without a dress code mostly because dress and fashion are some of the last things we worry about.