Hopefully not, since they make the improperly-clad girls wear a giant man’s shirt to cover their tempting flesh.
As a woman who’s more than once heard phrases to the effect of “don’t walk into a lion’s den covered in steak” to criticize women for being ‘stupid’ to wear anything even vaguely showing one’s skin or suggesting one’s shape because men will harass/grope you, I personally think it would be nice to minimize the “girls are distracting the boys” (aka “girls are the problem, your developing bodies are a problem, girls are at fault” messages) phrasing. The boys hear that as well as the girls, and I’m sure some may begin to believe it.
I’m generally OK with dress codes. I have no personal stake in the issue. Just stop with the blaming for ‘distracting’ someone; present it as being appropriate for the educational environment. Trust me, girls feel conflicted enough about their raging hormones and changing bodies without hearing daily/weekly announcements about how they are fucking up the education and experience for the boys, among other things.
The problem is that any dress code is really for girls, and much less for boys. Boys don’t get the ambiguous message that they are only worth anything if they are sexy by showing flesh, while if they take it that one millimetre too far they are worthless sluts. Shops hardly sell clothes that are inappropriate for boys, and staying within the parameters isn’t socially penalised in the same way.
So having any dress code at all will automatically be part of that message to girls.
The only sane way to deal with it is on an individual basis in a constant conversation that includes personal dignity and respect for others. If a girl does wear something inappropriate to school, really, so-fucking-what? It’s not the end of the world, while the obsession with trying control what they wear is pretty nasty.
When my daughter was punished for the fingertip rule in highschool, she did a project looking at arm length to height ratio. She measure herself and a number of friends. She learned a lot, but the school’s administration was not interested (it was over their heads, I think).
We just went through this with my daughters school. After my husband (since I had the last round with the school over a free speech issue), wrote a note to the administration talking about women having control over their own bodies and their dress not being responsible for the behavior of boys - we were told that the reason the dress code is in place was for “respect” (we rolled our eyes - the girls are put in their gym clothes when they don’t dress properly - there is nothing respectful about gym clothes - and the boys are wearing slouching shorts and tshirts with sayings that are the current equivalent of “I’m with stupid”), and that - and this is the best part “however we choose to dress our daughter will be fine.”
She wore her non-fingertip length shorts and spaghetti straps to school for the rest of the school year. Graduated from middle school and I have a feeling her principal was not unhappy to see my troublesome daughter go. (She’s troublesome in the civic disobedience way - oh, and when her social studies teacher said he didn’t believe in global warming, she took him to task. Got in trouble for that one, too - that wasn’t the free speech issue, which was the National Day of Silence protest).
(My daughter is a 14 year old very intelligent headstrong lesbian feminist raised in a UU church where protest and civil disobedience are taught in Sunday School. Next year I get to make good friends with the high school principal.)
Back in my day the girls wore dresses that barely came to the wrist and didn’t even approach fingertip length. We still managed to learn things in high school. Sure, we often knew what color panties the girls were wearing but we didn’t molest them and we didn’t get disorderly. What’s all the fuss about if a girl wants to wear a short skirt? I say let them wear what they want to wear and eat what they want to eat. High school is hard enough without all the silly rules.
Here’s the area I want to explore, though: the “basic norms” for an education setting derive from, in my view, the same impulses that are being derided when referenced directly: the reaction of others to clothing. In other words, if we adopt the principle that you are not responsible for others’ reactions to your clothes, then by what rationale do you endorse “basic norms?”
Think about if your job said “I’m sorry, but your outfit goes against our dress code. Please keep in mind that we expect business casual dress,” vs. “I’m sorry, but your outfit it is distracting the male employees by making them think about sex rather than productivity.”
Boys don’t tend to wear those, as they are not in fashion for boys.
However, some boys wear their pants hanging down around their hips, exposing their underwear. Presumably, that would be against a dress code, though personally I cannot think of a less sexy style. But then, I’m not a teenage girl.
Sure. My question is: What is the rationale underlying ‘business casual dress?’
I grant the truth that interposing a more generic reason – “business casual” as a norm – avoids the blatant invocation of the idea that certain types of dress would district the employees and injure both productivity and reputation.
My question is: what is the rationale for “business casual” as a norm? (The norm part is well-understood, mind you – but what is the reason that business casual is a norm?)
I contend that the main reason business casual is a norm is the acceptance, at some level, that we are responsible for the reactions others may have to our clothes.
In the past it was the norm for men to wear a tie in a business setting (it still is, in formal settings). No-one could seriously argue that failure to wear a tie rendered men dangerously sexy and distracting.
I am shocked every time I go to a wedding now. I was taught that it was inappropriate for women to wear black or red to a wedding. Yet, every wedding I go to, women are wearing black or red - sometimes, the bride has her bridesmaids all in black - and I cringe all the way through the wedding at her poor taste and lack of understanding of the basics of etiquette. Acceptable seems to have moved on - social norms have changed. I have to get over being shocked.
Was it the school calling the shirt “the shirt of shame” or is that mother’s description of it?
This changes my opinion of the story a lot. If it’s the school, I am losing my mind with rage. If it’s the mom, then I’m much more meh on the whole thing.
The two big parts of the dress code that impact boys -
Pants (and shorts) should not sag.
Hats are not to be worn indoors.
Neither is enforced at my daughter’s school (how well I know, I have a hat wearing, sagging son, and I would have liked the school to give me some support on that - in the administrations words “they have bigger disciplinary problems to deal with”) - however, the girls dress code is.
Or pantyhose. What on earth is the rationale for pantyhose being more formal than no pantyhose? They are fake see-through legs we wear over our real legs. Because…?
No question that they are arbitrary – but they all rest on others’ reaction to what we wear, and all make us, to some degree, responsible for others’ reactions to what we wear.
Sorry, but facts are facts. And they aren’t that short… yet. WSJ
When I was in Junior High School, I believe the standard was shorts needed to cover the knees, which at the time was a concession from the rule that no shorts were allowed at all. At some point in High School I think that got changed to the fingertip rule. The only reason the rule affects women more (for now) is due to fashion pressures. It has not been fashionable for men to wear short shorts. However the trend is changing, so I expect High Schools to be dealing with headaches over boys with short shorts shortly.
There is no justification for a dress code apart from assigning responsibility to the individual wearing the clothes for the reaction of others to those clothes.
But there are two principles at work here, and you can justify some aspects of a dress code and not others based on how you reconcile them. They are the recognition that individual freedom favors putting the onus on others to not be distracted or behave inappropriately, and the acknowledgment of the reality that many people will be distracted by certain clothes (or lack thereof) and it is far easier to change the clothes than the reaction. Reasonable people can weigh those differently. Many people, like the writer I suspect, think that the scale should be tipped a bit toward putting a little more of the onus on the reacting parties rather than the clothes-wearer. You ca consistently believe that, taking all the factors into account, it doesn’t make sense to have a finger tip rule, but it does make sense to, say, prohibit going topless.
But then, I’m not a teenage girl.