At school, students are required to wear clothing appropriate to the defined dress code. The dress code could be seen as either helping, or hindering girls at school. Usually, a dress code will include restrictions on length of shorts, restrictions on strap size or strapless shirts, and restrictions on showing skin in general.
What puts the school dress codes in question is, are the codes unfair and old fashioned? Or are they reasonable? It can actually be difficult to decide what’s inappropriate and what’s not. I think most people could agree that showing a whole buttock or freely flaunting bare genitals would be pretty distracting; society’s not ready for that quite yet. However, is anyone really going to tell a girl wearing spaghetti straps that her shoulders are hindering the boy population from being able to do their school work, or taking away from the school environment?
At Middletown High School, the dress code has a rule against “…see through shirts, tops cut low at the neck or under the arms (including muscle shirts); bare midriffs, shoulders, or backs, or skirts exposing underwear.” Schools are telling girls not to wear certain clothing items that are in style and worn regularly in society. Is old fashioned reasoning what causes these ridiculous claims? Just because a girl shows skin does not mean the male population can’t control themselves.
Does the school dress code demonstrate sexism? Based on the definition, it would definitely seem so. The definition of sexism is, “prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex.” You might think this is taking the dress code too seriously, and that it makes sense that there should be rules against distractions such as immodest dress wear in a learning environment. The reason the dress code is backwards is because it has so many rules that are specifically towards girls.
Popular stores for boys don’t often sell short shorts and strapless dresses. The rules that apply to them in the dress code apply to both genders, and these rules are reasonable to most people. (ex.: “no clothing which advertises drugs or alcohol”) Most stores for girls, however, sell short shorts that don’t go much farther than mid-thigh. Tank tops, spaghetti straps, strapless shirts, crop tops, and see through shirts are all styles for girls right now. These are the styles of today, whether school administration will recognize it or not. It is unfair that girls, especially in warm weather, have to go out of their way to dress to their standards.
The funny thing about dress code is that no one actually follows it. So maybe one could say that we should stop complaining about the sexist dress code since it isn’t enforced anyway. But the thing is, some teachers will choose to enforce it at random, and it’s kind of offensive to be told you need to put on a sweater over your tank top; as if there’s anything wrong or distracting about my shoulders or upper back. It isn’t as strongly enforced as it could be, but what girls really need is for these sexist rules to be gone, so that we can truly be equal at school.
