When I got married, I had to put a small, triangular piece into my wedding gown for “modesty” because the pastor decided that there was too much cleavage shown. (And I was only a B-cup at the time.) Of course the piece went flying for my photos and reception, but it didn’t seem a huge imposition to make a concession to the word of a church authority on what was (or wasn’t) appropriate in the church.
Now, I could be extrapolating experiences here, but every Catholic school graduation I have ever attended has been held in the church which sponsored the school. If that was the case here, a no-cleavage rule makes perfect sense, and even though the dress isn’t overly revealing in other contexts, within a church, the rules are different and the dress could easily be considered to be too much.
But I don’t understand why no one – school officials, mom, kid – thought of using a scarf or something to cover the decolletage and allow this girl to take part in the festivities? It wouldn’t be hard, just slip it into the neckline and go. It might’ve been warm, but better to be warm and be there than to be cool and sittng at home.
I don’t know if it was an off day for those in charge, but I can assure you that it’s not a male/female thing. Or, at least it’s not at other Italian churches. At St. Peter’s, nobody is allowed in if they either have shorts or shoulder revealing outfits. NOBODY.
I don’t know if you think it’s stupid because it seemed to be a male/female thing, or jus the shorts issue in general. Either way, it was really disrespectful of them to do that on the church steps.
As for the dress, it is a bight clingy and it does show cleavage. It would be one thing if the girl was attending the graduation as an outsider. To be in insider, I think she should have known better.
I think the dress is fine, but it’s a Catholic school and they can make whatever stupid, arbitrary rules they want.
On the other hand, learning to put up with stupid, arbitrary rules and the tyrannical pinheads who enforce them is teaching them how to cope with the working world, which is what school is all about.
I am a middle school teacher and I have found that girls are developing faster and faster nowadays (whether it be the milk or not). I teach in a public school and as the weather gets warmer and warmer, the clothing is less and less. Girls can’t bend over in skirts without bearing all (6th grade too!) and they can’t lean over without doing the same. I could see this 13 yr old girl wanting to be like her public school counterparts. She may live on a block where they all go to a public school and she’s the only private school girl.
Anyway, back on topic, it is not difficult to find a dress that is not so revealing. When I go to any event that is an achievement or of the business type, I have something against showing off the goods. This is not the time nor the place. I graduated undergraduate college early and now, next weekend, I am walking with the class I should have grauated with (which happens to be at a Catholic College). They do not have any dress codes for the event, but I will come back to tell you how many girls show me what they’ve got. I personally have found something rather sexy, but not low cut.
40 posts, 783 views. Seems like a lot of Dopers want to examine the evidence first-hand, though not all of them care to comment.
I don’t like it, but they did make the rules clear. It’s not as if church rules or doctrine are meant to be individually interpreted by each attendee, right?
I can totally sympathize. I remember when I was in grade school havind a hard time finding pants for boys with enough crotch space. I remember the moms of the other children saying things like, “Tom Jones should have to wear a kilt”, and teachers always glancing down at my package while grinning. Its not easy bein’ me.
In this case, there’s big signs with drawings of a man and a woman, with crosses on the woman’s knees but not the man’s.
And the way the Venetians extract gobsmacking amounts of money from tourists visiting San Marco, I think there’s little reason to have respect for that church.
It’s not that bad IMHO, in fact I wore something that revealed more cleavage to my junior high grad!
And yes, I was in Catholic school, and our grad took place at the nearby church… and I hated my dress, my conservative Catholic Nanna chose it for me, bought it for me. I had no other dresses to wear for grad. It was the dressiest thing I owned at the time.
The school did say no cleavage… and yet what she’s wearing doesn’t shout ‘cleavage’ at me. It seems pretty good for coverage to me.
Well, since her dress is clearly in violation of a very explicitly-stated rule that she was given plenty of previous warning about, no. Her dress is not OK.
And regardless of what her mother says, cleavage is decidedly not unavoidable in the chesty woman. I’m substantially bigger-busted than that kid, and when wearing a properly-fitted, non-pushup bra, I don’t have cleavage. It’s also pretty easy to find dresses that don’t show your boobs.
When I go to foreign countries I try to respect the people and their culture. This sort of thing is what gives tourists a bad name. People aren’t going to think “Hey, maybe that’s a stupid rule”, they are going to think “Look, at those ignorant tourists! How rude!”
IMO, the dress is pretty tame, if somewhat tacky (I hate pastel pink, I hate ruffles on the bottom of anything).
The school said NO cleavage. The dress shows some, but not too much. Sadly, not too much cleavage is still more than no cleavage. The school wins this argument of semantics.
Not at all. Most graduation dresses I’ve seen are designed to make the girl look like a princess, not a tramp. My grad dress was gorgeous and I felt like a star - and the front came all the way up to my throat.
And as for the mom saying it’s “just like the one she wore for Confirmation”, I say she’s nuts. The confirmation dress is a simple v-neck cut, but the pink grad dress has a low criss-cross front, which is a cut that definitely puts boobies on display. My small-chested friends love those tops because they make their breasts look bigger. I can’t wear them because I get scared I’ll start knocking things off shelves with my hooters.
That dress, IMHO, is too sexy for a 13-year old. I think she should have known better, especially if they got a letter about the rules beforehand.
Get a clue. Men and women are different. And you think it’s cheap to keep a 600 year old building in good shape, espicially with the gobsmacking amounts of tourists visiting every day? Don’t like the rules, go somewhere else. They sound like a pair of stupid tenage idiots to me.
I’m sorry, this seems pretty cut-and-dry. The school stated ‘no cleavage’. She showed cleavage. She was sent home. Story over.
I was quite well-endowed as a young teen (I started developing in the fourth grade and wore a 36DDD by the time I was fourteen…had a breast reduction 9 years ago, thank GOD), and I could easily find dresses to cover my ‘assets’. It’s not that hard. I think the mother’s puposely being difficult.
Rules are rules. Ii think the mom is at fault here. Living vicariously through her busty daughters hot bodied means.
The dress doesn’t look that bad, but the hair. Oye! I would have kicked her out for the ‘just woke up’ look.
And, as I am a former Catholic School Girl, I got to wear pantyhose for the first time to my 8th grade graduation. And open toed sandals. (And a spectacularly bad frizzy home perm. Thanks MOM!)
The dress is cheesy and the girl and her mom are muttonheads. I was a busty gal as well, and I wore tops cut similarly to the top of her dress SPECIFICALLY to show off the ol’ rack, but I was not in Catholic school.
If you’re going to send your daughter to Catholic school, than you’re going to have to expect these things.
BTW – am I the only one who thought that a dress that was sheer enough to show your belly button through the fabric was a bit much, as well. given the circumstances? (My niece wore a dress with spaghetti straps and major cleavage to her confirmation. I thought it was embarrassing – and so did she! I noticed that she spent the whole day pulling the top up. I guess what looks like a good idea in the store doesn’t always seem like a good idea on the church steps.)
Man, I wore long sleeves and a high neck for my confirmation (think two-piece Little House on the Prairie), and so did every other girl in my class (I think one girl wore short sleeves, but she still had a fairly high neck on her dress). Not that our church was that strict, but we didn’t feel it was appropriate to show anything more.
