Yes, she has a choice about what career she chooses to pursue and where she decides to work.
But, she doesn’t have to adhere to the dress code at school, since objecting to the dress code got us an exception.
And her normal dress is jeans and a Doctor Who t-shirt - sometimes a science t-shirt. She’s the geeky girl that isn’t at all provocative - and being a lesbian, doesn’t have a whole lot of reason to want to be attractive to boys or receive male attention. On the other hand, being a feminist and one who is neither straight nor Christian, she has a lot of reason to want to challenge authority when it comes to control of her body and her sexuality. And that is the reason I support her - because she’s doing it with the right motivation. For her, dress can be political speech.
Shame that you wouldn’t do the same if your child was fighting for civil rights for her gender and sexual identity. But for us, she’s been taught this in Sunday School from kindergarten. It would be hypocritical not to support her.
I always railed against dress codes and particularly uniforms as a kid. Because I was a kid, fer chrissake’s. I figured this was the only time in my life where I might possibly be able to wear what I’d like to wear all day. I didn’t want that taken away from me.
And of course, it was awful when the shmoozy popular girls were able to wear the shortest shorts without repercussions and everyone else was called to the office over imagined slights. Favoritism and unequally applied rules are very bad for keeping kids obedient. Since I only wanted to wear jeans and a t-shirt though, I never went further than writing letters against uniforms whenever the topic was brought up in the district.
I then made it a life goal to work at a job that allowed jeans and un-tucked shirts (how I hate tucking my shirt in) and lo and behold, I have found such a workplace. Not every workplace has strict dress codes. Hell, work for yourself and you can have any dress code you want. Take that, “school is here to force you into the rules you’re going to face later in life” argument! Try hard enough and you too can work in your pajamas.
I suspect what she is doing is being 14. Lesbianism and feminism have most likely got nothing to do with it but are handy push-buttons to get your support.
Oh I’d support my children fully when they are right. I’d also sympathise with them and help them negotiate a climb-down when they are wrong. I will side with the teachers rather my child as I put them “in loco parentis” and wouldn’t work to undermine them in the same way as I wouldn’t try to undermine my wife when she lays down the rules and enforces them. Something as straightforward as trying to adhere to a dress code is definitely one of those times.
Doesn’t sound to me like a fight for civil rights at all. She could be in control of her gender and sexuality and yet still adhere to the dress code (or at least make a reasonable attempt whilst still trying to push the boundaries as much as possible…that is what 14 year olds do after all).
Again, she just sounds 14 when any cause is a good enough cause to kick up a fuss. I hear “wah, wah…not fair, must be allowed to do what I want” understandable and forgivable in a 14 year old, rather unedifying from a grown woman.
Teachers are always telling kids to be quiet in class and not to do things that annoy other students.
With any rules there has to be a line, and that line is usually arbitrary. A tank top with a strap two inches is not that much more distracting than one that is one inch, which is not much different that half an inch, which is the same as no straps and a halter top, which is not much different than workout top, which is similar to a bikini top, which is not much better than pasties, which is similar to topless. So having topless girls in class would therefore not be a distraction.
Obviously it becomes distracting at some point to nearly everyone and the line is different for everyone. Having to pick the line is an abritrary process but it is better than either having no rule, or having someone be the sexiness judge and deciding each case individually.
Obviously the schools in your county are so good that the educators have nothing better to do than to deal with the Rosa Parks of indecently dressed teenagers, but if they wanted to deal with reasonable people they should never have gotten into education.
Have you done any self-reflection about why your values don’t match your son’s but do match your daughter’s? Is it possible that you share your daughter’s values because she happens to have a vagina? Children are not and should not be raised as mini-yous.
Perhaps because he is a different person and my daughter is a lot like me. Not at all that she has a vagina - but rather that my husband, daughter and I share interests, and my son is the odd duck out. We are readers, he is an athlete. We like smart media consumption, to him, the height of cinema is The Hangover Two. He’s musical, we have tin ears. He is just a different person - not bad or good - just different.
Have I done self reflection - well, he’s adopted - yes, fifteen years of self reflection on nature vs. nurture and whether I should have forced him to go to Sunday school or if allowing him to develop his own values was a good decision.
My school dealt with the dress code like this: no shorts, no tank tops, no exposed stomach or back, no dresses or skirts above the knee, no camouflage, no gang prevalent colors, nothing sheer (even if you wear another top/bottom underneath), no profanity or inappropriate pictures on clothing, no pants sagging, and no ripped or holey jeans. Those are the only rules I remember and I went to a public school in a small Ohio town. It was like that from pre-K to 12th grade.
Dress codes suck. That’s true. But it’s also a small preparation for the real world. Life is all about doing things, wearing things, saying things, and dealing with things- that quite frankly, we don’t want too. But learning to abide by guidelines is part of teaching life lessons to your child.
Insufficient space to properly store things, such that personal items are constantly being lost.
I don’t know that there’s really any other purposes that clothes serve. Back in ancient Israel, according to my Bible studies teacher in college, ones dress told people what your station was, so to go naked was effectively concealing your identity from the people you met (hence the requirement that people stay clothed). But in a meritocratic society, there is no concept of class, so that’s not really an objection any more.
My school had a school uniform. The girls mothers bought the dresses (low waist, almost straight line) in year 7, with room to grow, and they wore those dresses until year 11 or 12. By which time it was well above finger-tip length. Although it would have always been longer than the gym slips they bought at the same time…
We didn’t find it distracting. You don’t get distracted around girls who would just as soon punch you out as look at you.
You don’t get it, rachellelogram. Her daughter is a feminist, and a geek, and she’s in to smart media. Her (adopted) son is less smart, and he’s in to less smart stuff. He’s not, uh, any worse than the daughter, no I wouldn’t say that at all, just less smart. He just has different, and most importantly, less smart values. I mean, really, Hangover II? It’s obvious he needed to be pulled out of school for his own good.
So when the smart daughter breaks a dress code she’s showing she’s not ashamed of her body. She’s rebelling against the system, man! When the less smart (adopted) son breaks a dress code he’s just being less smart.