Quick one first- On a related note, I think it’s no one’s business what underwear I (or anyone else) wears. In a school setting, I think a policy that “Underwear may not show at any time” is perfectly appropriate.
As for the primary issue at hand, it seems pretty simple to me. (For a POV-reference, I’m a recently-teenaged male.)
Say I’m a high-school age girl.
I go to a dance. I intend to have fun, socialize, maybe (If’n I’m lucky get to dance with that cute boy that sits next to me in bio class!)
I walk in.
My principal says, “Let me see your underwear.”
“What the fuck do you mean, ‘let me see your underwear’?”
“I just want to make sure you’re not wearing inappropriate underwear.”
“You gotta be kidding me!”
If I was in that situation, there’d be a slap coming her way, and, IMHO, damned rightfully so.
I’ll admit, not all girls are as “innocent” (whatever that means) as the above fictional example, but to assume all girls are going to “show muff” and assume that that gives one the right make them show you their underwear is beyond ludicrous.
And to assume that any actual muff is actually shown seems like quite a leap to me as well. (And if a particularly exhibitionistic girl does, she should be shown to the door pronto. I’m, sure she wouldn’t be hard to find, just look where the other 100 pointing, wide-eyed guys are looking.)
I understand the practicality of taking preventive measures in certain situations. This ain’t one of them. Not if handled in such a stupid manner as this.
As an aside to shrew I’d like to say that I have a great admiration for teachers. There sure as hell are some crappy ones, though (which is true of ANY group of people). Your concern for you students is quite admirable.
“Freak” dancing sounds like it would make me uncomfortable. I wouldn’t want to see, or even be present in a room with, people of any age behaving that way.
I think my school is a bit different from the examples presented here. Most of the kids I know are “Good 'Lil Christian Boys and Girls”, on the weekdays anyway. Despite that, there is as much sex as any high school, although drug abuse is less common, and violence is thankfully pretty rare.
I don’t know a whole lot about what goes on, since these kids tend to be pretty discrete, but I’ve overheard conversations which make me think that a lot of girls feel like their boyfriends expect them to have sex, whether they want to or not. They come up with rules for themselves, a length of time they have to date someone before they go to bed with them.
Sexuality is a natural thing, but when it’s a question of pressure and fear of losing a relationship, as opposed to love and affection, then something is very wrong.
As a postscript, I’ll point out that I don’t mean to imply that all christian children are immoral or hypocrites, just that a lot of the teenagers at my school are.
shrew is describing how school dances go down in Georgia (heh), but it’s nothing like CA. In CA, it’s worse.
For one, everybody who goes to a school dance “freaks”, if they dance at all. Usually, it’s more than just two people daning together, whole groups or lines are formed. This is very explicite…it actually shocked me the first time I saw it, and I htought at that point I had seen most everything! I’d say about 70% of the time, if the song is long enough and the kids adventurous enough, they will end up on the floor, writhing and shaking and humping. If the crowd is large enough and they are in the middle, a chaperone won’t notice. One girl ripped her beautiful green expensive dress all the way up her back. She didn’t seem to mind though.
The Administrators in our school did ban that type of dancing, and warned that anybody who was caught would be sent home. It didn’t really stop them though.
What was interesting to me was, the good Christian kids were usually the ones who ended up on the floor…(NOTE: THIS IS PURELY IN MY EXPERIENCE.)
I stopped going to the dances my Sr year, because I just thought it was rather revolting. It wasn’t sexy, or fun, it was very silly. These people are dry-humping and claiming to be dancing.
All that said htough, the woman shouldn’t have been checking underwear. If she noticed someone flashing way too much skin in the dance, throw 'em out.
This person was obviously wrong to do it in front of males and for this alone she should lose her job.
Let’s see:[ul][li]If you don’t eat at all, you die.[/li][li]If you don’t drink anything, you die.[/li][li]If you don’t breathe, you die.[/li][li]If you get very little sleep, you can’t function. If you don’t sleep at all for a very long time, you die.[/li]If you don’t have sex, you - oh.[/ul]
You know, I went to high school dances just last year, and I never saw anything resembling what has been described here. And it wasn’t as though I went to Mayberry High, either.
Anyway. . .I don’t see what someone’s underwear has to do with ANYTHING. I personally own a pair of kinda-see through black string bikini underwear (which is about as racy as I get). I don’t intend on showing it to anyone, and I don’t intend on dancing in a sexually suggestive manner; I just think it’s kinda fun to sometimes wear skimpy undies. But I bet if she checked my underoos, she’d’ve kicked me out, even though my range of experience in dancing is usually dancing witha group of people rather ineptly, and occaisionally having an inexpert slow dance with a friend (male or female).
Banning sexually suggestive underwear doesn’t solve a blessed thing.
drayton, bisexuality is all the rage right now with teenage boys, at least here in the States. So recently that I remember it, the idea of lesbianism was enough to make a normal heterosexual teenage boy cringe in disgust. Now, they grin and snicker. Girls “freak” dance together in order to turn boys on. Hmmm, examples of this trend? How about Cruel Intentions? A completely gratuitous girl/girl kiss in an otherwise heterosexual plot. Or Friends? When Rachel and Monica kissd for a whole minute to get their apartment back? Or when Winona Ryder kissed Rachel? Bisexuality is very in right now.
I’ve met you. You’re the parent of one of my ninth graders who told me, “I’d rather she date and have sex with a lot of boys now than to fall in love with one boy and throw away years of her life to him.”
To which I said, “WHAT!!! Those are her only options??”
And by the way, no one’s depriving them of sex. They can masturbate in the shower just like the rest of us did.
That is so damn laughable I spit Cheerios all over my mousepad.
Bless this woman’s heart. She was trying to do her job, and now people are going to call her names like this for the rest of her life. Sure, she was wrong, but come on, it’s not like she molested half her congregation the way all of these offending priests have. Let’s keep some perspective here, folks.
I apologize if my opinion and expertise aren’t good enough for you. Please allow me to direct you to pepperlandgirl’s post further down the page.
kittenblue and jjtm, thank you.
Yes, Pepperlandgirl, I’ve seen the kids dry hump on the floor too. I thought it might be too much for the virginal ears of the Dopers , but I’m glad you mentioned it. Another trend is for a guy to pull out a wad of money and wave it in the air. He will then give money to the girl who “freaks” him the best. I’m nauseous just remembering it.
Shrew,
I hate to tell you, but kids are going to have sex regardless of wether they are “freaking or not”.
I was (and still am) a rock kid. We went to the only underage rock club in dublin. we would pogo and mosh away, girls and boys, to our hearts content. And there was still sex a plenty happening.
Kids are going to be interested in sex regardless of what context you gather in.
There are two very easy things you could do.
Ban the dancing, threatening to stop the whole dance if it happens.
Ban the disco altogether
Just play Classic rock, and give the kids a real Musical Education. You can’t go far wrong with the Sabbath.
shrew - i’ve read your comments all through this page and I’m (quite honestly) fascinated by your opinions. Would you be defending this teacher if they’d been male?
What about those students that were not willing to ‘freak’? Is it right that they’d be inspected too? How do you discriminate between them?
Huh? Granted, I went to high school in Chicago about ten years ago, but I don’t EVER recall lesbianism or bisexuality in females causing any “normal heterosexual teenage boy [to] cringe in disgust.” If anything, it was always one of our fantasies… Take any smut rag from the 60s onward, and you’ll find lesbianism aplenty.
Girls dancing suggestively together was also not that novel in 1992.
“Bless her heart?” … now that really takes the proverbial cake.
You have to exercise a profoundly serious lack of judgment if you think that asking girls to lift their skirts in front of boys and police officers is somehow appropriate conduct.
Now, to bring in the obvious analogy, what if boys were checked out in front of girls to make sure they weren’t freeballing? Would that not also spark the same kind of outrage?
I just cannot fathom how anyone can rationalize the absolutely out-of-line actions of the teacher.
And how is making sure that girls aren’t wearing thongs going to stop “freak” damcing, anyway? Does this teacher think that you can’t do this dance with ordinary panties? Or that you can’t turn your panties into a pseudothong with a self-imposed wedgie? Or that you can’t change your regular panties for a thong in the girl’s room?
And how the heck is this a safety issue?
But the worst part of all is making the girls show this on the way in, apparently (from what I’ve gathered so far) right out in the open, not going into an office or anything. Even with the best of intentions (and for a procedure that would do any good) that’s indefensible.
Originally posted by Thea Logica
Read the article. Sounds to me like some psycho lesbian pedophile getting her jollies at the expense of the female students attending the dance.
Bless this woman’s heart. She was trying to do her job, and now people are going to call her names like this for the rest of her life. Sure, she was wrong, but come on, it’s not like she molested half her congregation the way all of these offending priests have. Let’s keep some perspective here, folks.
Um, excuse me, ejecting girls who were showing too much booty on the dance floor from the dance would have been doing her job. Lifting girls’ skirts and asking them to remove their tops for an “underwear check” is not doing her job. She is engaging in deviant behavior.
And don’t get me started on the pedophile priest issue. Yes, there are people in the heirarchy who suffer from cranio-rectal inversion. But the percentage of offending priests is far lower than that of Protestant ministers, or the general public, but that’s another thread.
Of course they are. The offense isn’t that “dancing leads to sex”. The offense is in the lewd nature of the dancing itself. I know lewdsounds like such an old fogie term to use, but truly the word describes the behavior best.
Absolutely. A man’s not a pervert just because he’s a man. My boss (principal) sends girls home everyday for inappropriate, exposed underwear. I respect him immensely, and only under hard proof would I ever belief he had anything less than admirable motives.
I believe this is where the woman erred. She certainly went about this the wrong way, as I have previously stated. She should never have inspected girls who had not given her reason.
Point taken. Not being a guy, I was speaking from speculation and my perceived experiences, but certainly I could be wrong.
Nor when I graduated in 1994.
Lay your hands off my cake, buster.
I completely agree. This one decision of hers was certainly lacking in judgment.
Boys get checked for jockstraps in the gym all the time. The interesting trend in male underwear, however, is that it is NOT getting skimpier, but actually LARGER and bulkier. I get onto boys just as much everyday about their underwear as I do the girls, but for very different reasons. Bustin’ slack and showing floss are two very different problems.
I can’t fathom why a society would want to ruin the career of an administrator who makes one mistake. It reminds me of when I was in college and working for two obstetricians. The doctor I worked for saved the lives of a mother and child by performing a cesarean when the umbilical chord wrapped itself around the baby’s head. What thanks did he get in return? The parents sued him for leaving an “excessive” scar. Let’s pick our battles, why don’t we? This woman, I would be willing to wager, has done enough wonderful things in her career to make up for one bad decision.
"How the hell do you know she’s even a good person, Shrew? you may ask.
How the hell do we know she’s not?
CalMeacham, certainly girls can freak dance in regular underwear. Excellent point.
Wouldn’t it only be deviant if she gained sexual pleasure from it? We don’t know that she did. I’ve been in the locker room with my teenage students. Hell, I’ve helped my teenage boys try on tuxedos for a fashion show I organize at the school, and I’ve helped the boys with disabilities get dressed a hundred times. Does it make me a deviant because I’ve seen them in their underwear? Well, lock me up and throw away the key.
Also, I have a hard time believing she got these girls to remove their tops. I’m thinking a strap check is probably more along the lines of what happened, but that’s just a guess.
To me the whole freak dance issue is a dodge being made by someone who screwed up big time. It makes not sense at all that she is so upset by freak dancing that she had to check for thongs.
In short she is just lying to cover her own ass.
Shrew you got a site on a priest that molested half of the congregation?
Curious, what other reason do you think there is? Aside from her obvious deviant nature, of course. The thongs themselves are inappropriate. I can’t believe parents even buy them for their teenage daughters.
There is a difference between a doctor doing the right thing and getting in trouble for it and a principal doing the wrong thing and getting in trouble for it. You seem to be confusing the two.
First of all, as the sister of a teenaged daughter, I can attest to the fact that it is not at all likely that a teenaged daughter would go underwear shopping with her mother. At least, not with my mother, who buys granny panties that show sometimes even with conservative jeans when one’s top rides up. Also, lots of younger teenaged girls find anything that involves a parent embarassing beyond all belief. These girls are probably buying the underwear on their own. And, as for those parents who do. . .::shrugs:: different strokes.
Secondly. . .underwear isn’t inappropriate until it is shown to someone. If I’m wearing clothing, the only way to even know what kind of underwear I’m wearing is too lok. I could be wearing granny panties, bikini panties, a thong, boxers, briefs, or even nothing at all :eek:. The only people who are going to know for sure are those people I choose to allow to see it. And, love, that is a very, very short list of people. My wearing a thong isn’t going to affect the way that everyone else sees me or thinks of me or acts around me because they don’t know that I’m wearing it.
During the normal course of a dance, no one would see my underwear. Thus, there would be no safety issues, no emotional issues, and no potential legal issues. The minute that someone forces me to lift my skirt, or requires that I do so in order to stay at the dance, my underwear becomes an issue. It wasn’t before, but now it is.
What possible motivation could someone have for making an issue out of a non-issue? If freak-dancing is really the reason, then I have no option but to believe that this woman, as a school administrator, is deeply misguided and perhaps not the brightest crayon in the box, seeing as freak dancing is obscene no matter what underwear people wear; additionally, any other “reason” along these lines would be equally misguided IMHO. Otherwise, by my own (admittedly not infalliable) reasoning, I can only conclude that she was either commiting a deviant action for her own pleasure, or that she, as somewhat of a control freak, sought to impose her own unjustified, extremely rigorous moral standard upon the students at the cost of their own most intimate privacy. Either of the latter two would be grounds for review and/or dismissal in my opinion.
Incidentally, and as a complete tangent, I don’t understand why the students would lift their skirts in the first place. I personally would be out of there with a simple “screw you, lady,” the second I was asked to do anything like that, regardless of what underwear I was wearing. I mean, hell, who wants to see my ugly-ass pastel pink granny panites ;).
I left my site with your sense of humor. They seem to have both gone AWOL.
I acquiesced to his/her point. If you don’t know a word, guinastasia, look it up.
Not at all. I believe there are no evil actions, only evil intentions. We don’t know this woman’s intentions, so I’m not willing to sit in judgment of her.
See, without my mother, I had no money. Even the money I made on my own went into a bank account with both of our names on it. Undies had to be bought by her, with her, and with her approval. I guess that’s just a familial difference.
Your list may be short, but many girls’ lists are endless. Over and over again everyday, I repeat the phrase, “I see London I see France…” I’m sure you wear your underwear discreetly and tastefully, but many girls don’t.
I’m guessing you don’t hike up your skirt, show the whole room your ass and other refinements, and then proceed to hump every boy in sight. Of course, I could be wrong.
I’ll say it again: THIS is where she went wrong.
Well, there may only be a fine line between showing your underwear and showing your vagina, but it’s an important line, I think. I agree with you that the freak dancing is inappropriate, and that if that was indeed the issue, then the dance itself should have been canceled. I still think, however, that thong underwear is inappropriate for teenage girls. Teenage girls need to worry about their grades, their friends, and where they’re going to college. Thong underwear can come later. Sure, I’m imposing my personal preferences and beliefs. That’s what people do.
Unjustified extremely rigorous moral standard? It’s thong underwear, for chrissake. It’s not as if she made them wear chastity belts or duct tape Bibles between their breasts. She’s a school administrator. Enforcing society’s “unjustified, extremely rigorous moral standards” is what she’s paid to do. Students (I can only speak for Georgia) aren’t allowed to wear lots of things to school: ball caps, bandanas, gang colors, visors, sunglasses, piercings other than “normal” ear hoops, rubber flip-flops, pagers, cell phones, short shorts, short skirts, tank tops with shoulder width of less than one inch, t-shirts for bands such as Slipknot or Marilyn Manson, t-shirts advertising any kind of beer, alcoholic beverage, or drug use, t-shirts advocating suicide, death, or violence of any kind, t-shirts that in any way oppose the morals and ethics of the home community (yep, that’s right), blah blah blah. Visible thong underwear is simply one of the many articles of clothing that aren’t allowed. She made a poor decision, but I can’t help but hope that she did it out of an attempt to do her job.
She should not have checked the girls at the door, but as has been already stated, she should have just kicked out girls who broke any posted rule. Her mistake is clear, but her intentions are not. I just hate to see her villified and assumed guilty before she’s even been tried.
, but I’m glad you mentioned it. Another trend is for a guy to pull out a wad of money and wave it in the air. He will then give money to the girl who “freaks” him the best. I’m nauseous just remembering it.