I’s a keelt, damnit, nae a dress, ya wee Muffin. 
They may take away our senior pictures…but they’ll never take our freedom!
Stranger
I thought I read it was a private school. I do have more of a problem w/ it since it was a public school. But then again if the rules are your picture can go in the yearbook if you wear the costume assigned to you, and you don’t wear the proper one, I still will have to decide with the school.
If this happened after the fact, meaning if the yearbook rule came about after the photos were taken then I would tend to side with her.
We are missing much of the story to really tell.
A case for gender discrimination. This has nothing to do with student vs. administrative control over content of student publications, this has everything to do with administration citing disproven and wholly false reasons for disallowing a perfectly legal, perfectly modest, perfectly appropriate clothing choice to this student based solely upon her gender. You want to suggest that your precedent would disallow an action on those grounds?
And if the rules were that she had to bare one breast or wear a clown suit or a joke arrow-through-the-head, would you still side with the school? Granted these are extreme examples but the principle still stands. She was expected to wear a garment which made her feel uncomfortable, and rather than feel uncomfortable she chose the only other garment offered. Then after the fact she’s told she can’t be included because she didn’t wear the garment that was forced upon her for no reason other than sex stereotypes (tuxes for boys, “gowns” for girls), based on “tradition” that didn’t exist at the time the photos were taken.
And, boy, is she cute in that tux!
Nae a dress, but ‘tis the full military ceremonial dress for many here in Canada. Men fight better wi’ tha balls flappin’ in the breeze, doan ye ken?
It’s basically just a piece of fabric. The one I wore in my graduation pictures held together with Velcro in the back. It did not have sleeves or ties that I recall. I had to pull my bra straps down my arms so they would not be seen. The photographer didn’t provide any pearls or anything. I wore my silver chain with a large initial charm on it to adorn the vast expanse of chest (but not cleavage) the drape showed. I didn’t like wearing it but I was too much of a wuss to make any protest. I just wanted to get done and put my dress-up outfit, or the cap and gown, on for the other photos. The drape photos were the only ones the girls were permitted to have included as their graduation photos in the yearbook. I am 26, and until I read this thread, I didn’t know that graduation dress was different at other schools. My mom and her sisters wore snazzy feather boa things in their graduation pictures.
I agree that the girl in question looks great in the tux.
Then you missed my post before. The options I see is 1- wear what is provided and get your pict in the yearbook, or 2- opt out of the entire thing. In no way should she be forced to wear anything.
I still feel that her actions were an insult to the other girls, but perhaps not enough to bar the photo - again it all comes down to the details we don’t have.
Huh? What does her wearing the tux have to do with the other girls?
[QUOTE=kanicbird]
Then you missed my post before. The options I see is 1- wear what is provided and get your pict in the yearbook, or 2- opt out of the entire thing. In no way should she be forced to wear anything.
[quote]
But she did wear what was provided. The princpal seemed to have objected to the fact that she picked the “wrong” piece of apparel, but approximately half the class was wearing it, so it’s isn’t really clear what was wrong about it…other than that it offended the gentlem^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hman’s sensibilities.
In what possible way could her actions be construed as “an insult to the other girls”? That she didn’t conform to the expected norm? That she didn’t want to play Barbies? That’s she’d be labeled “box office poison”?
Gah.
Stranger
You really are a fucking moron, aren’t you? HOW does that “insult” her fellow female students?
First off, I don’t see where Otto said that you said (oy vey this is getting complicated) she should be forced to wear anythng. Just that she shouldn’t be penalized for not wanting to wear something she was uncomfotable in.
Secondly, I could begin to understand you view that “these are the rules for participating, follow them or don’t participate”. Understand if not agree with.
But…it’s an insult to other girls??? You’ve lost me again. Why? How is it an insult to anyone else to wear what you’re comfortable in?
Do you not see that “wear what we say or don’t participate” is force? Is anyone holding her down and Velcro-ing her into the drape? No. Does the pulling of her picture from the book for not wearing the drape constitute force on the part of the principal? Absolutely.
There you go raising that bar again. An insult to the other girls? As near as I can tell, the decisions made by any other girl were not a factor in Kelli’s decision-making process. She wasn’t saying the other girls were wrong or stupid for wearing the drape; she was saying that she herself was uncomfortable wearing it. She should not be forced to wear something which makes her expose herself to a degree which makes her uncomfortable, and that’s what denying her the opportunity to appear with the rest of her class in the senior section of the yearbook effectively does.
I hope the yearbook staff puts a big black box in the middle of the page where her photo should have been. Or better yet, refers readers to the ad the family bought to get the photo in the book. Which raises another question, if the photo is so terrible that it can’t appear with the class why is it acceptable when the family is shelling out $700 for an ad?
I assume that you too have a problem with the word ‘penalized’, which I assume it because you know that not granting a privilege is not a penalty. She was not penalized for wearing the incorrect costume, she just was not granted the privilege of being in the yearbook.
You and others see this much differently then I do. I see her as rejecting the female costume in favor of the male one as a direct insult to all women who appreciate the differences between men and women, and feel that men and women are different and that the difference is a wonderful thing (this is why I did mention about gender mis-identity, as if ‘she’ was really a he in a girls body, I could understand ‘his’ actions).
I really don’t know if this applies to what happened, again we don’t have all the info. If she did it to make a statement, I take it as an insult to women. If she did it for modesty, I take it as acceptable. If she knew her actions would mean no yearbook photo, I side with the school. If she didn’t know, I side with her.
Your idiocy is apparently complete, and completely uncorrectable.
As a card carrying female, I don’t see how a drape is a female costume, or a tux is a male costume. I’ve never seen a female wear a one-size-fits-all black scalloped tube that requires assistance to put on, in public. I have seen females wearing tuxedos (see the multiple examples above).
Do you actually feel personally insulted every time you see a woman in a pair of pants? If so, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to insult you. But I’m still not sorry for wearing pants and a hockey jersey.
Hmm, where do graduation gowns fall on the scale of female-to-male costumes these days?
Next you’ll be saying that they gave her the “freedom” from having to make a choice about what to wear. :rolleyes:
But her celebrating her difference as an individual, regardless of plumbing, is inacceptible?
You seem to clutching for some kind of statement that is not there. Nowhere in any of the links provided has it been suggested that she is “anti-straight” or “anti-female” or that in any way she seeks to destroy gender differences, or whatever else it is you are taking offense at. It seems to me that you are taking upset by the fact that this young lady didn’t fall in line and wear the right thing at the right time in the right way, and thus, should be punished–sorry, **not granted the privilege–by being excluded from an acknowledgement that was permitted every other student in the school.
Ah, well. As Roger says, “In ten years, you won’t even remember what this place looks like.” And Principal Dumbkopff will still be there, the king frog in his little pond.
High school…where the adults often act even less mature than the children.
Stranger
This statement is quite literally the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen on this message board. It is quite possibly the stupidest thing ever on any message board.
I agree Otto, and I am now more stupider for reading it.
Most of kanicbird’s post in this thread are sheer and utter lunacy.
[sub]I wonder what color the sky is in her world?[/sub]
A direct insult to other girls? Girls wear pants (and tuxes) all the time and I’ve never heard another woman say they were insulted by it.
Does anyone think that this would have been a big deal if the principal hadn’t stepped in and banned her photo? I can’t imagine anyone in my high school would have cared about something so insignificant (maybe if she’d worn something really wild, but she didn’t). Most likely, a few students would have said something like “oh, look at Kelli’s photo–that’s so her” and gone on with getting signatures and moaning abouy how they had a monster zit in their own photo.