Um, I’m not the one singling out your daughter, Dangerosa. You are the one who seems to think she deserves a special exemption because she’s lesbian and geeky and “country club”. I’m all for treating everyone the exact same way, regardless of how their mothers THINK they look, regardless of how they look individually. If a girl with a big butt and big boobs can’t wear short shorts and a tanktop, then neither can Miss Skinny No-Ass. That is 100% fair. But saying Miss Skinny can wear whatever her mother says she can wear, while some other girl can’t? That’s 100% unfair. And that totally defeats the purpose of an institutional dress code.
Everyone thinks they are a special case and deserves a variance. But administrators don’t have the time or energy to find out who’s not intentionally flashing titty and who is. Thus, the need for codified rules. Not only applicable to people who don’t come from good homes with upstanding feminist values. But everyone. Because I swear, if I saw a classmate of mine getting a pass for her short shorts, but a teacher thought mine were inappropriate for whatever reason, I’d be seriously pissed off. It’s just straight-up easier to say no short shorts for everyone.
I don’t know why you think I’m singling out fat chicks or black/latina girls. That’s real WTFness right there.
Actually, we asked that the dress code be done away with - not that our daughter be given an exception. We GOT an exception - which was NOT what was asked for. And you are the one arguing that certain body types can’t wear certain clothes without looking sexy or inappropriate or distracting because of “oh, honey, no.”
I think its inappropriate to blame the way a woman dresses for the way a man acts. And that is what I believe this dress code comes down to. Girls aren’t permitted to wear short shorter than their fingertips because it is “disruptive” - but how can simply wearing something be disruptive - its the reaction to what is being worn that is disruptive. And I think that sending the message to boys that its ok to act out because of the way a girl dresses - they can’t help themselves - is EXACTLY the wrong message we want to give to middle school boys. When we have middle school dress codes based on the sexualization of girls who are eleven to fourteen years old we add to the body image problems of young girls and the “boys will be boys” attitude that creates real problems with how men and women interact.
Where middle school girls are dressing to be purposefully provocative, I think its DEFINITELY worth addressing that with their parents on a case by case basis. It may be a sign of sexual abuse. 15% of sexual abuse victims are under the age of twelve. 7% of middle school girls have been sexually abused. Don’t we NEED to look at each case as special?
Because it may be relevant at least in part, some context. Here’s the text of the email that I sent (with names redacted).
I didn’t ask for my daughter to get special treatment. The response I got was:
The “whatever your daughter wears to school in Friday, or any other day, will be just fine and won’t create any issues” is what Dangerosa is referencing as providing her with a free pass.
Which, if I’m being honest, kind of pissed me off, since that’s not what I wanted. I didn’t want my daughter given special treatment. I wanted the administration to realize that they were sending a crappy message and fix it.
People can wear whatever they want to wear, as long as they can handle the consequences. I’m not “shoulding” anyone. However, it’s incredibly stupid to think that everyone is equally distracting, no matter how they are dressed, so let’s throw up our hands and not ban anything. A guy wearing a duck costume is very distracting. A guy wearing khakis and a t-shirt isn’t. A young woman dressed in short shorts and a tank top is more distracting than a young woman dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. An institution should have the freedom to draw the line at whatever level of distraction they feel is preventable, without people accusing them of being puritanical sexist pigs. And they shouldn’t have to explicitly ban every piece of attire that is potentially distracting just to promote a reasonable standard for its student body.
I do too. But I don’t think being distracted can be equated to rape or sexual harrassment or the usual actions that are implied by this statement. Maybe a guy isn’t distracted by spaghetti straps or short shorts. But he is distracted by the giggling from the other boys (and the girls too). Or he’s distracted because the teacher is distracted by the distracted students. Chain reactions of distraction are what schools are constantly having to stamp out.
Just curious if you have this philosophy for other provocative stimuli. Should your son be taught to ignore a classmate’s racist symbols? Should your daughter be taught to ignore a homophobic slogan a classmate may decide to wear on a t-shirt? Seems to me that’s an awful lot to ask of a young teenager. Just because a racist symbol or homophobic message doesn’t affect all kids equally doesn’t mean that it’s unfair to ban these things for the sake of school harmony.
“Dress so that you aren’t distracting” is the implicit message behind workplace dress codes. A few years ago, my coworkers and I were all hauled into the conference room where the division director–a woman–chewed us out for not dressing appropriately. I clearly remembered the word “distraction” being used in reference to spaghetti straps and tube tops (of all things! We’re scientists and engineers, for pete’s sake!) I don’t care what gender you are or what your sexual preference is, seeing someone tugging at their tube top every five minutes during a staff meeting is DISTRACTING. Since you can’t keeping people from tugging at their tube tops, then it makes perfect sense to ban tube tops all together. There’s no need for tube tops in the workplace.
I don’t know what kind of middle school your daughter goes to where the kids aren’t already sexual and sexualizing each other.
What I’m hearing from you is that girls’ sense of their sexuality should be respected and trusted, but boys just need to suck it up and deal. “It doesn’t matter, young man, that you are now discovering how awkward and uncomfortable it is to become visually aroused in public. It is up to you to figure out how to handle this in a mature way. Because no one is going to have pity on you if you get caught gawking or giggling or having a visible boner. Be a man and suck it up!” This seems pretty insensitive to me. I don’t care what the Jews think. Thirteen-year-old aren’t men, nor should they be expected to conduct themselves like men. Just as “girls will be girls”, so too “boys will be boys”. Until they mature and develop self-control, boys are going to laugh inappropriately or stare when they should be listening to the teacher. And girls are going to be catty bitches and say “ooh honey, noooo!” when they should also be listening to the teacher. No one benefits from pretending that teenagers have the maturity of adults and that distractions don’t impede the learning process for everyone.
If we have resources to treat everyone like a special snowflake, I would agree with this approach. But since schools are being asked to do a million different things in ADDITION to providing a decent education, I think this is an unreasonable expectation. It is also goes counter to what happens in the real world. Dress codes in the workplace don’t have special exemptions. I can’t go to my boss and tell her I should be able to wear a tube top, since I don’t have big breasts like the other women do and besides, I’m a nerdy asexual who has nothing but innocent intentions. My boss ain’t got time for that kind of craziness. Why should a high school principal?
I’m guessing the school made an exemption for your daughter not because they think she’s special, but because it was the most expedient way to get ya’ll off their back. Institutions kowtow like this all the time, and it only makes things harder for everyone else. I believe you when you say that getting an exemption wasn’t your intention. But by emphasizing your daughter’s lesbian, geek, feminist qualities, you make it sound as if you believe she is deserving of special consideration. And that is worthy of some :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:
But we can only go on what you post here. And while you may not actually treat your daughter as a special snowflake, or treat her better than you do your son, that is how it’s coming off. If everyone else is misinterpreting your words, the problem isn’t on our end.
My point is, you aren’t communicating well. And again, saying, “but we have more information than you do!”, well, we can only go with what YOU tell us.
So, if your daughter’s new teacher shows up for work every day in a Borat-style mankini, you’d have no issue with it? After all, if the students find it a distraction, that’s their problem, right?
And some guys look sexy / distracting whatever they wear, so you may as well have no dress code.
No, but its really inconvenient when the police shoot you. Even getting a 24 hour detainment for no good reason isn’t fun.
In school, the worst that SHOULD happen to a girl is that she gets harassed, and that SHOULD be taken care of by the administration in an educational experience for the boys that teaches them “just because she’s wearing a short skirt doesn’t mean you get to harass her.” Which, hopefully, would be a lesson that would take for these guys to keep them from treating women like meat because of their short skirt in a bar.
In an otherwise excellent summary of what I have been thinking, this line was jarring. Why are you dragging Jewish religion custom into this, only for the purpose of putting it down? No Jew thinks a 13 year old is a man. It’s purely a religious designation and symbolic, just like few people think a girl is “now a woman” just because she gets her period, even if we say it that way.
Early on, people made a bunch of assumptions about what happened, and those assumptions are stuck in people’s heads now. Things like my daughter dresses like a slut - or even that the issue was shorts. Or that there isn’t a good reason for me to treat my children differently and have different rules in place. Some people are getting me and my daughter mixed up with the picture in the story the OP posted.
(You would agree that when your son has a drug dependency problem, it isn’t fair to his sister that she has to live under his restricted set of privileges? Or should he get to break serious rules like possession and underage drinking and get a free pass? Or should she be disciplined for his actions and the household rules change for everyone? I would like to know how you suggest I deal with this in a manner in which I don’t treat one “better” yet address the very real problem my son has and don’t treat my daughter unfairly by punishing her for things she didn’t do?)
I’ve gotten so much help from strangers in telling me how my family works, what my daughter looks like (athletic?! :)) that this really isn’t my story to tell any longer. And I know the HUGE parts I’m leaving out that are pertinent, but you don’t need to know. Its a fantasy of the SDMB at this point, and frankly, would take far too much effort for me to explain.
I believe dress codes in the workplace are appropriate. I think rules on fingertip length shorts and three finger wide straps in middle school go too far. So, no. The teacher is an employee. But perhaps you should call his parents in for a conference to determine if he needs professional help.
:dubious: I guess I wasn’t intelligent enough. There was nothing tongue and cheek about the rest of your post, so it made that comment rather jarring to me. But I guess my reaction is my problem, then. Plus- I never said it was offensive, just out of place.
Seriously, would it have been so hard to say “sorry that my comment came off that way.”?
The bottom line is, who cares if they want longer shorts and wider straps at school? I’ve raised a delightful, gay, feminist daughter all the way to her sophomore year of high school and she gets the idea that what she chooses to do at home and what she’s allowed to do at school are two different things. I can say to her “I think that rule is silly, but that’s the rules at school” without crushing her spirit. She’s not being targeted or victimized by the school.