#sexistdresscodes
Mary Catherine Lawler
Recently in the US, dress codes have been aggressively enforced against young women in high schools. Last year in New Jersey, a group of young women formed#iammorethanadistraction to emphasize that dress codes as they are currently being enforced (read: against women and not men) are not only sexist, but also promote rape culture, teach women that physicality trumps education, and teach men that women are sex objects. In May of this year, female students in Toronto joined Alexi Halket, a high schooler at the Etobicoke School of the Arts criticized for wearing a crop top to school, with #croptopday, while August 2015 saw the rise of the hashtag #IfAnythingSchoolTaughtMe in protest of dress codes being prioritized over women’s learning.
Laci Green, a vocal feminist vlogger, issued a summary of what’s going on and five ways that the dress code epidemic is damaging young women and even girls as young as Kindergarten-age.
Megan MacKay spoke out with a satirical vlog-style YouTube video in which she demonstrates ways to tweak your outfit based on different dress code criticisms:
A high school posted some pictures of herself on Instagram and described her experience at school, captioning it as follows:
“Today, I wore this outfit to Beaufort High School. About 20 minutes into the day, my friend and I were excused from class to venture to the vending machine because our teacher was planning to do nothing all class period, as usual. On our way back, I learned something very important about myself: I am a whore.
As I was walking down the hallway, I heard a voice behind me. “Your skirt is too short. You need to go to in-school suspension and then go home.” Thank you, Mrs. Woods. Thank you for teaching me that looking good for school is NOT appropriate. Thank you for letting me know that while I may think that I am dressing up for my Teacher Cadet lesson, I am in fact dressing to go to a night club or the whore house. Thank you for bringing me to tears in front of my friends and classmates because you do not have the decency to pull me aside and explain the problem. Then again, I did not have the decency to put on real clothes today.
So maybe I am in the wrong. Maybe our society isn’t yet advanced enough to handle 3 inches of my thigh. This is a patriarchal society and I am a woman. I have to be kept in my place, or I may do something that is so rarely seen in Beaufort High School- learn.
You saved me, Beaufort High. As Student Body President, junior marshal, and a recipient of the Palmetto Fellows, I was heading down the path of hard drugs (good thing you’re testing next year!), strip clubs, and sugar daddies. I don’t know where I would be without your misogynistic views. How could I go on without a certain teacher making sexist jokes all class? How could I survive without my science professor letting me know I am an inferior woman? Yes, I am a woman. I am woman with thighs, a butt, and a brain. I am bigger than Beaufort High School. All of us are. Maybe instead of worrying about my skirt, Beaufort High should take notice of its incompetent employees, and sexist leaders.”
Carey Burgess on Instagram – mynameiscarey
Others at the Charleston County School of the Arts in North Charleston, South Carolina stood up for women’s rights to wear what they like by showing up to school with a literary and social accessory: a scarlet letter.
Caroline Hamrick on Instagram – caroline.jpg
This summer, the Toronto-based trio Andrea Villanueva, Kerin John and Erin Dixon formed Project Slut, making public a video that explains the dangers of dress codes for non-traditional, non-heteronormative, and non-white students. Their promotional image, seen early in the video, closely resembles Santigold’s 2006 debut album Santogold and issues a call to action to #endthedresscode.
As fashion changes, it remains crucial for us to use social media as a use to combat everyday sexism such as the enforcing of dress code only for women. With female-only mandatory assemblies, the removal of students from class for hours, detention, and other public embarrassment and harassment of female and non-traditional students, features like YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, though too often also an anonymous platform for misogynistic and patriarchal hatespeak, also provide us the means to speak out and fight back.